Axioms or Conventions?

I love my gut argument cause one cant' argue axioms-- either it is there or it's not. Jonathan, now I understand that your not wanting to be an aritst statement meant you don't care if your photography reaches gut level reception using photographic means only. But I hope you don't exclude the possibility of doing just that because saying all you can with the medium cannot possibly hurt. So, if photography can communicate only as much (that door was open all the time, Mr.Somerset)and you really have an urge to say more and/or everything, just make sure you did everything that could'be done using this medium. Otherwise, why not draw or paint or just write it. Yeah, I forgot photoshop.

 

I don't read books about photography and please, forgive me for trivializing the whole thing but I can't help it. I can see it clear now :) Here it goes it -- to me, photography is like sex. I rather have it then talk about it. And if I want to have that post-coital chat, I better know what I am talking about otherwise the whole discussion makes no sense (Woody Allen is an exception). I should thank Jonathan for this discussion and hats off to Andrew Somerset who stopped my pseudo-intellectual burping just in time.

I'm happy to substitute 'interpretaion' for 'explanation'. I've been thinking of the classic objection that if what the words tell you isn't 'in' the photograph, then they're just a crutch to support its shortcomings. What I was trying to say with regard to the 'Mannequin' image is that - although most viewers wouldn't necessarily 'see' what my commentary explains - all these ideas are nonetheless 'in' the image.

 

Can't talking about sex itself be sexy? Certainly part of the foreplay (or maybe I'm doing it wrong). I started photographing because I read an essay by the critic Walter Benjamin, who tried to find a way of writing that would be modelled on photomontage. Great idea, I thought, but if you want to think about photography, then surely the best way to do it is with a camera? So, I don't separate 'thinking about' from 'doing'. Indeed, the whole point of it for me is to bring these things together. Which is not to say that everyone needs to be as anal and high-falutin' as me about it.

 

If you want to see my attempt to construct a story on the principle of photomontage, with written quotations juxtaposed and 'flashed' up like images, and images incorporated as part of the 'argument', you can find an example in the Routledge journal 'Rethinking History', vol. 7.2 (2003), pp. 139-67. The article is entitled 'Pistols! Murder! Treason!' and is about the assassination of a spy in Venice in 1622. It includes a 'flip book' of the firing sequence of an antique pistol (filmed on a special digitial camera borrowed from a lab at 9,000 frames a second), and a four page comic strip. You can download it for a fee from Routledge's website, or alternatively, I can e-mail a copy.

P.S. I'm all for a Venice convention, but then I always have an excuse to go there. I shall be using my new 5 by 4 field camera there throughout February.