Purely recording time

http://gmwphotography.com

 

please visit my site, is there anybody out there interested in purely

recording???

 

After a few documentaries I wanted to begin projects which were not

so much documentaries but were always going to become uncompleted

photo essays in a sence. But I did not wan't to edit any of these

photographs, as I believe in recording a place in history, if it was

taken then it should not be edited no matter how blurry it is a

theory which I have recently adopted.

 

Any way, if there is anybody with some useful comments, then please

reply to this, am I the only persona who see's value in this kind of

work.

 

Walker Evans' etc???

 

Please reply

See my response to your cross post on the general unarchived

forum (essentially, that your theory is fundamentally

nonsensical).

I looked at your Gulf War protest series. Certainly fits into the documentary/journalistic category. However, I don't see the connection to the anti-editing idea. You have certainly edited by selection, whether it is before or after the fact. I'm somewhat reluctant to explore your images further over a slow modem connection unless there is some promise of something more innovative than what I've seen so far.

Mike has it right, Geoff. You are "editing" at the very moment you take the picture, by choosing when and where to point the camera. Pictures snapped without thought are rarely of merit, despite happy accidents. Pictures snapped for historical purposes gain some value by simply being old, but that's way off in the future! Even then, the "recording" will have much more interest if it was done well at the outset.

 

I have a small project going of this nature. The county has bought two half-blocks of the city for construction of a new corrections facility. I've been recording what is on the land now, and what is happening as the current buildings are moved and demolished. But the more interesting I can make these pictures now, the more interesting they'll also be in future!

 

I'd suggest you approach your "purely recording" shots the same way; always make your pics the best they can be, and don't count on the passage of time to make them better. Your own intelligent thought and artistic judgment can make the difference.<div></div>

Oddly enough, the subject of chance and serendipity in image creation came up recently in the Classic Cameras forum. My position was that letting a picture happen as opposed to making a picture is a perfectly valid technique. However, I think that this implies that editing of the results is more, rather than less, important. In the end, it is probably one of those things better illustrated than talked about.

The simple fact that you're recording history doesn't preclude recording it with care and with attention to the quality of the record.

 

As for never throwing anything away, no matter how blurry, come back and let us know how it's going a decade from now. While I agree in principle, you have to set some limits or you'll drown in used film (or digital storage media).

 

Re your pix, I looked at the Conservative Club and at the protest. In the protest shots, note you have some discretion re when to release the shutter, but instead of pictures showing the protesters removing their sign from the church gate or of the pro-war guy interacting with the protesters, we get snapshots that have to be explained by their captions. This is using "merely recording" and the horrible spectre of being "too movie-like" as an excuse for weak photos. And the notion of not colour correcting because it alters the record is verging on silliness.

How do you decide when to push the shutter release?

I think you really should set some limits however loose

they maybe. It's one thing to explore certain conceptual

theme but one still have to achieve some minimal

contextual or aesthetic quality else you are just wasting

film and time. Your example of Walker Evans doesn't really

hold up as his photos DO have context and aesthetic though

they maybe a little too mundane for most.

"Purely recording time"...

 

...Still photography, by definition, doesn't record time. This is the crucial flaw in your reasoning, Geoff. Still photography takes samples, or slices out of time and archives them for later use. And you, the photographer, get to choose when to take the slice.

 

Aesthetically, I do appreciate the unstructured documentary approach of "purely recording", as your term describes. However, still photography is the wrong medium for that particular approach.

 

Video, especially surveillance video (which some video artists are now exploring), and atmospheric audio recording (see www.transom.org) is a much better medium for pure, unstructured documentary recording.

I am begining to see some other opinions here now, and I really am begining to see where I need to let in other ideas a lot more.

 

I can't thank you all enough, yes, I am editing, and choosing which parts in time to photograph. thank you