It’s Been A Week
It’s been a week where I’ve been head-down blinders-on productive. Productive, but ungrounded, and sort of spinning around, agitated, stretched thin (I printed and submitted to an art show; I got a new camera and some lighting gear and a new tiny printer, and have been figuring out how to store it; I ordered some polaroid sheets that barely exist online (after typing in their name again, they probably do not do what I want them to do—a big disappointment and a project shattered); I began a slow large process of ‘rebranding,’ or just branding at all at first. I booked a few shoots and have had work on top of that—work where I spoke up in the church’s book club and the office administrator, later, asked me where I got my degree, which is somehow a suggestion, in my mind, that I should go to grad school, while the intern wants to send me to A/V training probably because I am too apathetic. All of these are good, but once, I did not quite see my life like this).
If there has been a focus to this week, it has been technology. Technology like a checklist. On what camera I’m using, on how to store it best with all my other gear (how many Pelican cases do I need! Kathy says, while we print, “I LOVE PELICAN CASES!”), on whether polaroid film can ever be infrared (including a long search into thermal-infrared cameras, how they’re used, why they’re used, and a few examples from Zone of Interest and ORA, but not, in fact, Call Me By Your Name), and briefly, getting me out of this mess entirely, the relationship between a technology and representation (an inescapable problem—c.f. “Physical and Material” in The World of Art: The Photograph as Contemporary Art). All this time, in this thinking hole of tedium (a certain circle of hell), like a technical list. The world has been going on around me.
So a few observations. (The only way to get out of that hell of tedium is to observe; there is no prescription out).
I drove home from a Hana Stretton concert last night, after sunset. She performed in the trees, while the sun descended behind her. The clouds held color. She rubbed her hands to keep them warm, while whispering into the microphone, playing acoustic guitar. Her music sounds like a quiet hum. She announced that this was her dream concert. To be among the trees reminded her of home. And at her dream concert, her only goal is to make people feel restful, like napping under the trees. If you find yourself laying down on the floor, closing your eyes…
Of course I thought of my week for a moment. Just a moment. And then I looked at the ground, unfocused my eyes, or just stared while the leaves on the ground in front of me moved in and out, like the earth’s sigh. Sigh. I watched myself let go.
I had told myself by the end of the week that I would be out of that thinking, technological hole (a particularly awful type of thinking). I drove home. Everyone that takes their work seriously should be familiar with the technology of their work. That is a no-brainer. But to be focused on that alone (this is an image-maker’s trap), on the aesthetics of a technique, as if that were enough (and gosh darn people do sure often treat that as enough) is to forget that there is a larger world taking place around us. That representation is more than just a stylization; it can be for our purposes, for our sense of the world and a sense of life.
I’m finding that starting with an idea, or a curiosity about the world, or a particular feeling or perspective, for me, must come before technology (of course these are not so neatly split). A feeling like a nap, a sense of contingency. Photos can come after.