2010-08-16 // 20:50:41
TheGentlemanAmateur
The calmness is something amazing.

^ Definitely. Though I find it oddly hard to stand calmness.

2010-05-19 // 16:38:48
Jay
Thinking out loud: It's often said that anyone would go nuts if we saw reality as it really is, do we make photographs to reinforce our illusions that keep us at the more sane end of the spectrum?

I'm sweet and charming (no really!) but I'd be exceeeedingly sweet and charming if someone paid me loadsa dosh to photograph abstract colours for the rest of my life.

Big BUT...... the whole concept brings me round to the same point I always end up at which is; why bother representing it through "art" when people really could just sit still and observe the beauty around them. (my current favourite answers are if it's fun and/or pays well, as for art I'm at a loss)

Did you assert your opinion by composing this picture this way rather than just framing the water or the sky I wonder?

^ I'd say that I'm not interested in maintaining my sanity or preserving existing illusions. I make photographs in order to add lots more pretty new illusions that I haven't got yet to my burgeoning collection. As for the reason for making stuff into art instead of just sitting there and enjoying it: I think it's actually hard to really look at and register a lot of things when they are "out there" in the world. Our brains are designed to filter a vast proportion of the stimuli around us out of our conscious minds in order to stop us going into sensory overload. So maybe one motivation of making art is to find a way of really registering some of those things we would otherwise keep blocking out. Maybe we can only effectively short circuit that blocking mechanism by introducing an intermediary medium - painting, photography, whatever - then imitating and simplifying one element of reality. And maybe, as a part of that imitative process, we each end up adding something subjective of our own. Maybe this combination of objective depiction and subjective twiddling is what stops it being science and turns it into art - and also what ends up making the process and the result a lot more interesting for everyone. Another motivation for making art is the cheap thrill one gets from using reality as creative wank fodder. And in answer to your final question: I'd find it jolly hard to make myself take a picture of some stupid ole water and nothing else. It would feel so wrong. I wasn't actually trying to scorn her approach with this. If anything, this picture - which is rather an empty and untypical one for me - was as close as I could come to trying to understand it. So it may have been an attempt at a kind of compromise. I don't really feel very connected with the picture though, so it probably hasn't worked.

2010-05-19 // 15:14:09
muchj
Magic feel!

^ Thank you.

2010-05-19 // 13:58:56
Jay
I was convinced you found Inge lurking in your imagination but hey! I googled her and it's true. Verrrrrry interesting and the stuff of wanky art critics dreams. Guess you have to see it for real like Jim Turrell's skyspace thingies. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. (lovely sunset)

^ I think it probably looks fabulous when a whole series of these coloured surfaces are hung around a massive room of a museum and you can see how the light changed over a day. The colours and the texture are beautiful. But still... would drive any normal person nuts. I voiced this opinion to one of my companions and he suggested that it might work the other way around: that making the same picture of nothing over and over might be the thing that had stopped her going nuts. Perhpas he was right. She was exceedingly sweet and charming.