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June 12, 2007
Photography is sometimes described as "the art of seeing" - by which is often meant impressions created by light. Is this modernist account plausible?
Now we often view the landscape from inside cars:
Gary Sauer-Thompson, looking towards Petrel Cove, Victor Habor, 2007
And so we "see as tourists". Sometimes we see "the landscape" from airplanes:
Gary Sauer-Thompson, between Adelaide and Canberra, 2007
This is a very fragmented mode of seeing and any given instance is more or less meaningless. To understand what we are seeing requires a context to be contributed from the viewer. They are interpreting the image.
'We' does not just mean humans and so what we "see" is quite different:
Gary Sauer-Thompson, Ari, 2007
Photography is about creating meaning from a continuous stream of visual information is it not? We are just using images rather than words. 'Creating meaning' refers to interpreting the world.
Now some talk in terms of photographic 'messages.' So what would be the photographic message a of a tree on hill. Some would say that, well , a hill is a hill, a tree is a tree. No cultural code is needed, since everyone, pretty much regardless of culture, can see and recognise hill and tree.
Or they simply understand the message of the Abu Ghraib photos.
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Hey wheres the porcupine gone?