Check out David Spriggs and Xia Xiaowon as they paint through layers of glass to create portraits and abstractions.

Fabricating Images

Photography is a medium in which reality is captured in one of the rawest senses. Strictly speaking it can tell a truth that no other interpretation really can. In this retrospect, it becomes questionable as to whether it is based in creation or description. Although it leaves room for the practice of expression or deception it still stems from an actual physical moment as opposed to a solely abstract idea or process of the mind. Coleman states in The Directional Mode, “The most important photography is emphatically not Art.” Like other artistic mediums such as sculpture or painting, photography can fit into many categories like abstraction or realism for example. But unlike other forms of art, photography takes the viewers experience to a new level by not only describing and translating a moment or feeling, but sometimes tricking the viewer into obscuring reality from design.

Take Rene Magritte’s painting Ceci n’est pas une pipe. A painting of a pipe, where underneath it states in French “This is not a pipe.” It concentrates on the idea, that although there is a depiction of a pipe, that pipe does not exist in reality. I feel the controversy over photography as an artistic medium hovers around the notion that if we were to look at a picture of a pipe, we know that it once existed. Even with abstractions we can see that although we may not be able to decipher the element itself, we are seeing reality in a new light. The beauty of this is that we can take this instinctual knowledge of reality and twist it to convince viewers of a false reality, allow them to see deeper into the physical world, or portray a feeling or mindset to either identify with or discover.

Taking these tools and utilizing them to communicate in a visual language is the nature of art. Les Krims stated in 1969“I am not a Historian. I create history. These images are anti-decisive movement. It is possible to create any image one might think of; this possibility, of course is contingent with being able to think and create. The greatest potential source of photographic imagery is the mind.” Such as drawing becomes merely the division of space, and how music becomes merely the difference between a noise and silence, photography becomes the absolute between substance and seclusion.

Fabricating Images

Photography is a medium in which reality is captured in one of the rawest senses. Strictly speaking it can tell a truth that no other interpretation really can. In this retrospect, it becomes questionable as to whether it is based in creation or description. Although it leaves room for the practice of expression or deception it still stems from an actual physical moment as opposed to a solely abstract idea or process of the mind. Coleman states in The Directional Mode, “The most important photography is emphatically not Art.” Like other artistic mediums such as sculpture or painting, photography can fit into many categories like abstraction or realism for example. But unlike other forms of art, photography takes the viewers experience to a new level by not only describing and translating a moment or feeling, but sometimes tricking the viewer into obscuring reality from design.

Take Rene Magritte’s painting Ceci n’est pas une pipe. A painting of a pipe, where underneath it states in French “This is not a pipe.” It concentrates on the idea, that although there is a depiction of a pipe, that pipe does not exist in reality. I feel the controversy over photography as an artistic medium hovers around the notion that if we were to look at a picture of a pipe, we know that it once existed. Even with abstractions we can see that although we may not be able to decipher the element itself, we are seeing reality in a new light. The beauty of this is that we can take this instinctual knowledge of reality and twist it to convince viewers of a false reality, allow them to see deeper into the physical world, or portray a feeling or mindset to either identify with or discover.

Taking these tools and utilizing them to communicate in a visual language is the nature of art. Les Krims stated in 1969“I am not a Historian. I create history. These images are anti-decisive movement. It is possible to create any image one might think of; this possibility, of course is contingent with being able to think and create. The greatest potential source of photographic imagery is the mind.” Such as drawing becomes merely the division of space, and how music becomes merely the difference between a noise and silence, photography becomes the absolute between substance and seclusion.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits
in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

- Helen Keller

Tara Donovan nebulous Styrofoam cups ( Take somethings for something else entirely)

Sex At Dawn is a book I was reading over spring that describes our ancestry and how that plays into our desires and concepts of fidelity. It discusses our relationship to Bonobos, a highly sexual species of monkies who share intimate relationships with every member of their group including different genders, family ties, and all age groups. It place emphasis on creating unseparated bonds with all of those you depend on and are close to.

Nassim Haramein's research in physics is extraordinary inspirational to me and the concepts I'm interested in. The connectivity of the world can be boiled down to simplistic elements, that mirror themselves infinately. This is relevant to my photographic conceptions in that it describes the dividing lines of matter and perceived reality by interpretation. Weighing in different factors in unison we can can innately find that it isn't just aesthetics or subconscious perceptions in how we feel the world, but also the basic nature in 1:1 vs. 0:1 to determine our interpretation of reality.