Using a quote from Janet Malcolm’s collections of essays about photography as a springboard, I talk about the relative truth of photographs and look back to our discussion about peripheral vision.
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- Camera Position on Facebook – Share your images
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- Janet Malcolm’s Diana & Nikon on Amazon
This particular podcast, reminded me of another quote…and of course as a postmodern, social constructivist, I resonated with both. It is: “The only factually correct aspect of photography is that it shows what something looked like under a very particular set of circumstances. But that is not the same as the underlying truth of the event or situation. As to objectivity, it does not exist” (David Hurn, 2009). It has been interesting for me to move from a realist believing photographer, to one who “knows” that it is all a lie, and our job is to try and make those lies look as real as possible. My recent image shown at Danada House is an example.
This camera position made me think of the various signature lines I’ve used in my posts over the years. Here are a few of them that you might find interesting or at least amusing as they seem to be in line with this recent camera position.
Cameras lie. It is not so much that it is easy to get a camera to lie, as it is so hard to get one to tell a truth.
Painting is an additive art. The artist adds to the canvas until they stop with their version of reality. Digital photography is subtractive art. First we throw away 90 percent of reality then remove what is left bit by bit until we have only the reality we wish to show.
A camera is a machine of light and time with the purpose of capturing a luminous moment. Like the eye it is a tool of the mind.
A lens is a tube of compromises. The more you put in one end of the tube the more bad things squirt out the other end.
I would posit that there really is no such thing as “the” truth, but rather many truths. As someone else once said, “what you see depends upon where you sit”. (logical inconsistency alert) I would take that to be true both literally and metaphorically.