Ellice, Manchester UK 2004TAKE
To take a photograph. You're taking (recording) a piece of time, a facsimile of an object in an instance, for yourself. The image "taking" has 2 methods of recording: 1. Recording an "object" itself in that moment the shutter closes, and 2) Recording your projected idea of what is worth recording in that time, for what ever reason, beauty, attraction, anomaly etc and returning it to object form - the physicality of the photograph itself - to retain.
By both accounts, you have taken something away from Time.
SHOOT
To shoot is to kill, and then (in photography's case) preserve. Photography is both a death and preservation of time. From the moment the image is recorded on film/sensor, that moment is both dead and preserved
To shoot is to kill, and then (in photography's case) preserve. Photography is both a death and preservation of time. From the moment the image is recorded on film/sensor, that moment is both dead and preserved
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I have issues with time, time escaping, time lost. Sleep sometimes scares me as you go to "sleep" for a period of time, but where were you? Asleep, but where is the time gone? what has happened in that time? With photography, I have the "power" to keep that time, keep the moment, when i see fit, ad it to my catalog of visual language and personal narative: I was here, I saw this, I consider this moment worth keeping as an object.
How does this relate to my growing obsession with portraits/figurative works?
I love, to the point of obsession looking at people. I love people watching, whether it be a the way they dress, the way the light falls on them, the shadows made by their features, the way they hold themselves. I want to record the things I see, for posterity, for pure fact that at that moment in time I've found something beautiful in some aspect of their person. I've found a "punctum" (1) in an "object" (because I turn the body/being into an object by wanting to photograph) that I want to keep, and study at a different time (possibly to discover what makes me as a photographer want to keep this person as an object).
SNAPSHOT
Unplanned, non staged photograph. I've recently been going through some photos I've had on file for quite sometime, searching through "Snapshots" to find "Photographs". I'm unsure of the snapshot, because I set out to make images (photographs in this instance) first and foremost, I don't understand where the snapshot fits in to my image-making vernacular. Doesn't every image I make/take have the power of my history and knowledge in art making behind it, enough so to make it a "Photograph" rather than said "Snapshot"?
Unplanned, non staged photograph. I've recently been going through some photos I've had on file for quite sometime, searching through "Snapshots" to find "Photographs". I'm unsure of the snapshot, because I set out to make images (photographs in this instance) first and foremost, I don't understand where the snapshot fits in to my image-making vernacular. Doesn't every image I make/take have the power of my history and knowledge in art making behind it, enough so to make it a "Photograph" rather than said "Snapshot"?
(1) 'Camera Lucida' - Vintage Classics Edition 2000, Roland Barthes, 1915-1980 pg 26,
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