Writing
A bit about Makers.
I am compelled to create anti-content, that is, photography for the purpose of story, intimacy, and intentionality. I’ve referred to my current project, Makers, as slow portraiture (or portrait-journalism), in direct response to virtual consumerism. We digest media at an alarming rate and the pressure to produce content to fit the appetite and metabolism and gluttony of an algorithm is at odds with the soul of the photography I wish to champion. Makers is a curation of talented creatives, personalities I gravitate towards, and the images will live in print. It’s not for everyone, but that’s the point after all. If I have any hope for this project, it’s that I can add my voice to the virtues of intentionality, and that someone may decide to pull their own craft from the bottomless ocean of content and tangibly resurrect it into the real world.
If we are on the topic of wishing, and a wish can be anything, and it doesn’t mean it’s the end of more wishing tomorrow, then I will heap my dreams into this river like some giant wishing well. That’s what they call it? Any body of water which drinks our spare change and the full bodied hopes of children who teach us all the meaning of believing and of course the world is possible, it’s ours isn’t it? All of ours? And conflicted people stare casually at grace and let it slip to the bottom.
The virtue and terminus of analog photography is the tangible print, which occupies physical space. It is defiant to the cold storage and virtual nonexistence of digital imagery, which trivializes the entire process. We can adopt the principles of the analog camera to the digital by imposing a restriction on the otherwise limitless capacity of our technology. Before every press of the shutter release we need to ask whether this is an image which should be printed into existence.
Film demanded some intention by design. What was considered a flaw of film during the advent of digital was its limit of 24 or 36 frames per roll. Every single shutter release would bring the photographer one exposure closer to winding the negatives back into their housing to later be processed in a darkroom. There was (is) an economic calculation in photography, particularly as film became more expensive.
Digital promised to eliminate that pressure. And it did. But art which thrived on the scarcity of a product was replaced with an abundance of digital files, which may or may not possess any element of inspiration or intention. Hence, a self-imposed restriction: is this picture worth printing? My CF Express card can fit over 1,500 RAW images at 48 megapixels. And like a bigger house, or a bigger backpack, more space often excuses more junk.
So rather than sell off your digital kit, it may be worth adopting, even temporarily, this habit of slowness, and intent, to preserve the virtue of picture taking: to make images that matter; if not to the world then at least to yourself.
Thoughts on AI and Photography in response to last night’s @ctforum :
The nature of photography is one of preserving fragments of reality and that is something Artificial Intelligence has neither the motivation nor the sentience to accomplish. Photographs are artifacts of precise record, and are captured at the free will and whim of people. One might say these images are shavings of truth and for all that AI is (or may become) it is not an inspired soul which considers and chooses the moments to chisel into eternity. AI generated art assembles visual content from a dataset, and thus never truly deals in the immediate unfolding of reality and the documenting of the pulsing, breathing, interactive nature of life. By definition, it cannot. Whatever conflict exists between the visual arts and the social values of profit and expediency, is not new. The struggle between unmitigated consumerism and our autonomy is carried into this new frontier. New players. Same game. And it is incumbent upon the creators to surge against addictive technology clutching at our very agency. So, let us put our minds to the deep work of imagining and create something beautiful from that deep ocean of conscience, virtue, and wonder that we call humanity.
I have a bad habit of looking up in cities, that’s how you know I’m not from one. A skyline for scale; asphalt fairways for dimension. The world I’m from undulates with the slowness of organic resurrection; glacial landscapes, ancient lakes. It’s an old world that cycles through centuries like breathing. A city beats like the heart of an infant, and rests on the breast of the land.
There’s a verse from my childhood that hangs on the door to my mind so that I read it each time I pass through (which is often). It says to consider only that which is worthy; saturate yourself with what elevates you. In the many caustic renderings of religion, beauty is tarnished by reckless people and we are so dismayed with the whole damn mess that we discard truths caught in the tangle. But some words cling to the corners and don’t shake out. The mandate to set our minds toward the truest, most honest, just, pure, lovely, and good - assumes an elemental truth of humanity: we require goodness to flourish. The fumes of fear and hysteria yield no hope. The dysphoria in our world may well be tacked down to our obsession with lesser things. But the lovely and good are reflective by nature, perhaps even viral. And it is only by their nourishment that we will thrive. So the next time you see a dogwood in bloom, or the next time a song reaches deep into your heart, or a story raptures your imagination, or the sunset kisses your cheek, “think on these things”.
9:00am. This is the first wind that doesn’t bite. A real spring breeze carries the sun; doesn’t scrape edge-wise against the skin. The dogwoods and cherry blossoms are how we feel; we too look up and blush.
Creators must be students of what we love. For writers, we must love language enough to absorb it, mix it with our blood, and pour it back onto the page. For photographers, we must deconstruct the images we adore and ask why we are so drawn to them. And thus, love becomes a form of determination; but when is it not? Perhaps this pursuing and deconstructing of what we love is the very essence of it. To love something is to dive into it, to unwrap the mystery and find meaning in the wholeness of a thing rather than the pieces.
I’m flying over Virginia I think. About halfway between the radiant atmosphere of a southern spring and the austere clutches of a northern winter. The thaw at home just means mud while life tries to break the barrier of decay. Newenglanders are much the same, rising momentarily to greet the sun with something akin to charm. Temperamental. Like our trees and briefly enviable spring and fall, though autumn is truly our crown. It feels a bit more real here; we have roots that plunge into this rocky ground; come wind or water I’m transfixed by a place older than most of the world. Something about that fact puts granite in our constitution and we never embrace the sun without remembering the cold at our back.
#connecticut #newengland #ctphotographer #visitct #travel
daedalus wept
for his son
fell into the maw of a gasping sea
swallow what the sun struck down
and this is less a thing of heat
less of the treachery of the tides
and is more of what it’s like to
continue
when your heart is caught in the ocean
and all you were doing
was keeping hope alive