Freedom to be present...
What do you want to look at? What do you want me to know about it?
These are the questions as we move toward photography projects. The goal of our work together is to make pictures that relate to our time together, that explore and expand from one another. Sometimes called a "series"...I prefer to think about "projects."
The difference might not be evident on the surface, but the distinction is about the idea of work itself, and pictures that emerge from work. I've written on this topic before, but it bears repeating.
The work you do is emotional, intellectual, spiritual, historical, even mathematical; it's the work of exploring and thinking; the work of breathing, of just making it through each day, each week.
You're working it because you chose to do so. Even if you don't think of it as a choice. The pictures that emerge from the work have been the focus of our seminar.
In other words, all the talk about computers and buttons, apertures and shutter speeds, pixel dimensions and color profiles, etc. and etc., has been to get us to the point where we can now ask, sincerely, why? Why make pictures? Why put yourself through this headache?
The answer is amazingly complex, and might take a lifetime to fully explore.
We're beginning with the act of pointing the lens, with the act of making the print, with the awareness of being present, being here. And with the conversation: what do you want me to feel? to know?
Last month I saw Greta Pratt's project Liberty at Natsha Egan's exhibit Road to Nowhere, in Houston.
About the project, Greta Pratt writes:
I was first drawn to the wavers, as everyone is, by the unexpected sight of someone dancing on an urban street corner dressed as the Statue of Liberty. But after hearing their stories I became interested in them as individuals.On her website you can see her exploring fundamental human stuff that we all feel and care about. You can see her working. And you can see the pictures that come from that work.
Here at the end of our term you're free to cut loose and make flat pictures that shift shapes and colors along a two-dimensional plane defined by simple edges. And that's a good place to start. But you're also free to dig deeper, to work the foundations, and make pictures that call us to be present, to be awake.
What have you noticed? What do you want to look at?
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