I painted a lot when I was a boy. I have always used photography. When I was seven, I was given a simple camera. I would get my friends to pose in pretend fights or group bicycle crashes and then capture the contrived looking scenes. Capturing single frames from a situation in apparent motion was what interested me most.
Later I bought a cheap SLR and learnt all about aperture, exposure, shutter speed, depth of field, motion blur, focal length, focus, lens angle and film speed. Later still I saved up and bought a second-hand Russian enlarger and developing and printing kit and turned our family toilet, much to the others' frustration, into a temporary dark room. The process was incredibly laborious and inefficient but exciting. As a teenager I was sometimes paid to take photographs and was assistant photographer on the Tour of Ireland Cycle Race for example which involved hanging out of cars and from motorbikes. Capturing single frames from a situation in motion was what interested me most.
Then I felt like I was part of a skilled minority. Now everyone takes photographs but curiously I still feel special in relation to the phenomenon of photography, having seen its radical transformation with the advent of digital technologies. I discussed the relationship between contemporary photography and painting historically with a group of students recently and found the conversation hugely stimulating. It amazes me how little of the basics of photography, or lens based vision generally, picture takers and makers understand, or feel they need to understand. Very few really appreciate what depth of field is for example and how that accidental characteristic might be advantageous in helping human subjects discern what is important in a scene. It amazes me how something so incredible as photography philosophically, historically and most importantly politically can be taken for granted. The meanings of photography become even more substantial and un-overlook-able when you consider moving image and animation. I make animations and use video, like many, and use still photography for research and to document the dynamics. It is also interesting to consider the spectrum from highly dynamic situations to those where moving image begins to approach still, the movements or fluctuations are slight, less spectacular.
Examples of photographic work I am currently engaged with are as follows: a series of related prints I make at a rate of one per year; the Now Man/No Man exercise which is about the relationship between human being and camera; a plan to utilise the photographs traffic wardens take of illegally parked cars and finally I'm working on something triggered by one in a series (the only one I can now find in fact) of pictures I took of my mother's rusting Datsun 120Y during the more impoverished, pre-Tiger-Economy, period in Ireland. Amusingly this is a car she now refuses to admit was hers. I also worked for artist Peter Seddon and Curator Barry Baker on a project which involved bringing photographs and still drawings to life through subtle use of animation/simulation techniques. This work was exhibited at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nîmes from Nov. 2007 to Feb. 2008.
Barthes and others wrote positively about the idea of amateurism. Alternatively there are criticisms of the contemporary situation or 'the cult of the amateur'. I was too scientifically conscious of what I was doing with cameras in the past. In more recent years I relaxed with photo-taking and learnt to use the various technologies differently. I’m fascinated by the wider meaning of photography and the possibility of subverting understandings of it. With 3D Modelling Software you can create a scene and using the virtual camera actually turn Perspective off for example! The technique, or fact of, Perspective is potentially oppressive in my opinion, was taken very seriously for the first time during the Renaissance which corresponded, of course, to the advent of Bourgeois Society. The power to switch Perspective off then I associate, naively perhaps, with an undermining of that order. Photography is a weapon of revolution. Paradoxically, photography now, because knowledge of how it can be manipulated is widespread, and secondly because of the enormous quantitative increase in image capturing, gives us more Truth. If you believe in that kind of thing.
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7 comments:
I was interested in the following statement:
'The technique, or fact of, Perspective is potentially oppressive in my opinion, was taken very seriously for the first time during the Renaissance which corresponded, of course, to the advent of Bourgeois Society. The power to switch Perspective off then I associate, naively perhaps, with an undermining of that order.'
Thoughts on perspective:
initiall thoughts - perspective is just an optical illusion - both in say classic renaissance imagery and ultimately in 'reality' - it's the way our brains have learned to perceive the world - but in a multi dimensional universe or multiverses all exisisting simultaneously a 3 dimensional view ( typical of what we percieve as 'perspective') is just a rather flat visual slice. Tht's what so exiting about say, 15th century works of art in which 'perspective is warped' - just now looking at Memling's 'La Chasse de Sainte Ursule' - perhaps an earlier example would be better - (yes, 'la Legende de Sainte Ursule' - by la Maitre de la Legende' - no date given but it 'appears' earlier ) anyway this 'warped perspective' holds infinitely more visual information and could be described as 4 dimensional, maybe 5 - ( maybe more). In contrast I have always found later works that are 'in perspective' incredibly flat/dull. The thrilling 'breakthrough' that they 'mirror life' or 'reality' appears rather lame, they don't. What I find really interesting is how the medieval world/mind and current scientific theories concerning the afore mentioned 'multiverses' correspend so harmoniously. Will the 'Renaissance Proper' be widely viewed retrospectively as a severe and lengthy glitsch in the vision and progress of human civilisation?
thanks for this. interesting points raised especially the idea of four or five dimensions incorporated into a flat image.
we cannot choose how we see or challenge biology too easily i guess: natural selection has given us lenses and the eye-brain complex. on the other hand we can choose how we present information and the 'warped perspective' you cite is but another possible approach. today an artist raised with me other pre-renaissance habits i was unaware of. and in the east different traditions were strong. engineers developed techniques such as isometric and orthographic projection. in side-scrolling computer games and music videos 'parralax perspective' techniques are common.
my suggestion, and i have come across sources which back this up, is that the long interest in perspective is not just innocent or about duplicating a way of envisaging. will consider more...
e-mailed to me from anja raben:
just tried to post a comment back on doomsbury but wierdly it did not recognise my password??
anyway my reply was as follows:
- your quote - 'we cannot choose how we see or challenge biology too easily i guess' -
- my immediate response - 'or can we?'
I'm wondering how much of this could be cultural - rather than actual - child development sites that babies do not focus 'as we do' until a certain age ......this is a long shot but I'm wondering if there is a cultural bias - I have nothing truly weighty to back this up at present though - just a hunch and some vague memory of being told about some tribe (in Africa I think) that could make no sense of a drawn (western)portrait. At the time I wondered if it was just imperialist clap trap. However, from my own experience -I can vividly remember drawing a family portrait at about the age of three or four - definitely pre school anyway and being very content with the placement of the figures on the paper in relation to what I saw. Later when I was quite a bit older and had been introduced to 'perspective' the same drawing wasn't at all how i remembered it - as if I had 'lost' that ability to see multi dimensions in a 'flat' image. i think it possible to use perspective as a reference point when for example negotiating ones way down the street - but I also see things 'warped' quite naturally ( and this is equally negotiable)- sort of switching between the two really. I don't know if this is my synaesthesic wiring - which is by it's very nature multi dimensional - ie a smell is a colour, which in turn is a shape. Mmmm ....might be worth watching how one sees things? I mean how often do we actually observe ourselves observing? Does this make sense? I shall observe myself observing in tomorrows daylight and see what it looks like.
'my suggestion, and i have come across sources which back this up, is that the long interest in perspective is not just innocent or about duplicating a way of envisaging'
Could you elucidate more on this?
Thanks!
yet one more attempt to post:
with regard to my previous comments and after having let the 'question of perspective' settle in the back of my brain ( the visual cortex – which chugs along quite nicely, processes very efficiently and has no need of written language complications) for a few days - perspective - 'as we know it' is in my opinion most definitely a cultural phenomena and it is interesting to note how much we take it for granted that we see things the way we think we do. I am not just speaking from a piss small minority of ‘differently wired individuals’ – there are a shed load of cultures/ peoples who do not experience the ‘visual world’ – ( again for want of a better term) in the way that westerners believe they do/ or have to come to do. I most certainly do experience the world in a variety of ways – often simultaneously but have noted that ‘perspective’ is a ‘default setting’ with which I can engage with others on a day to day basis – a lingua franca if you like – but a limited one. To me it seems just a question of how you choose to see the world – at a recent synaesthesia conference I was asked to describe my ‘way of seeing/experiencing’ to a journalist from the glasgow herald – by the end of the interview I had both him and others starting to ‘see’ things ‘synaesthesically’ too – and that was the fascinating part – it’s just a question using a different part of your brain and not accepting things as prescribed. It’s also an exellent memory aid I might add.
I wait further elucidation on mocksims’ statement - 'my suggestion, and i have come across sources which back this up, is that the long interest in perspective is not just innocent or about duplicating a way of envisaging'
VOTO GIORDANO BRUNO! PROPOSTA DEL MINISTRO PER LA FILOSOFIA E LA CONSERVAZIONE DELLA MEMORIA!
still need to put time into locating the material i was referring to but a cursory search starts to throw up stuff like:
"but
such recognition has in the past left them at the mercy of the humanist as bred out of
the Renaissance. For the classical humanist of the sixteenth century, the world was
filled with artifacts which could be copied, improved upon, translated into fine art,
transplanted, fragmented, framed, housed and finally anchored within a perspective
of continuous space which receded towards a vanishing point. The viewer was
always on the outside looking in as a detached spectator, in contrast to the total
immersion of early mediaeval and tribal society. Nature itself became the ultimate
artifact, the most stubborn and challenging of all to be mastered and contained by
man."
from some journal or other
obviously 'eye and brain' points to some of what you refer to here too. individuals in circular societies (which was/is often the case in less densely populated tribal times) see differently. perhaps that scene in 'father ted' where ted is trying to explain to dougal that the small cows are in fact not small at all but far away is illustrative, contains more wisdom than is immediately apparent.
Ah, good old father Ted - in which I think there is always more wisdom than may meet the eye initially - out of the mouths of babes, sucklings and 'young priestlings'...eh?
'For the classical humanist of the sixteenth century, the world was
filled with artifacts which could be copied, improved upon, translated into fine art,
transplanted, fragmented, framed, housed and finally anchored within a perspective
of continuous space which receded towards a vanishing point.'
Glad this point has come up as it reminds me of the post I tried to post some weeks back. After an arduous motorway journey in which I was on the lookout for 'the observations of my observations' I was confronted with an endless vanishing point - extremely reminiscent of 'a junior school exercise in persepective' that seemed only relevent for a 'detached spectator' standing on a train track waiting patiently to be hit by an oncoming train - that would be their only point of actual attachment within the 'picture frame'. Pondering this I wondered if it might have something to do with 'the point of infinity' having become 'fixed'. This, at present cross references my delvings into the 'arguments' between Giordano Bruno and the Venetian and then Roman Inquisition at the end of the 16th century. The Church insisted that there was a point where the universe stopped - Bruno insisted the opposite and was duely burned for this and (other opinions)-
The comparison between Bruno and Father Dougal is an apt one - Bruno also started out as a 'trainee priest' - but rebelled against the doctrines of Aristotle and well, basically just asked too many (seemingly illogical) questions.
Right - that's my twopennyworth for the moment.
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