"We seem to fear that unless we keep talking and calling
upon the world to talk, we will be overcome by the dread
muteness of objects and by the heedlessness of nature, that we
might awaken to our "true" condition as strangers in a strange land."
- Michael Benedikt, For An Architecture of Reality (1987)
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in search of nothing: the taking of a photograph. "taking" almost seems to imply a theft, an act of force; the theft of an image that does not belong to me (or anyone else, for that matter). one does not know in advance what will be shot (and killed?) - one feels a mood, one wanders apparently aimlessly - the Situationist dérive - camera in hand, pursuing an ambience. nothing tangible. the result (hopefully) is the apprehension of an image... (apprehension) of something not there: absence, lacuna, loss. "All that is essential is unseen". That is the goal. Wistful thinking, perhaps? Forgive the pun. to "shoot" an image/photograph is often to kill a memory/a scene/an action & to preserve it (like a dead insect?)... what I wish to achieve is a living image where the un-represented, the absent (signifier) takes on a life of its own, flees the scene of the crime (the photograph/the shooting/the theft) and takes up residence like a desperate fugitive in the mind of the viewer. I like to think my best photographs evoke the words of Beckett: "To restore silence is the role of objects." I currently teach classes in both digital and film-based photography at the Arts Center of the Capital Region and Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY. |
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we would do well to recall Foucault's admonition: "Do
not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same:
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