(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone
I'VE BEEN AWAY FROM MY BLOGGING MACHINE over the Thanksgiving holiday. While I haven't been away from my picture making machine (device), the iPhone, I also haven't made many pictures during that time. And, starting tomorrow, I'll be in the hospital for 2 days. So I won't be blogging during that stay but I'm quite sure I'll be making some pictures while I'm in residence.
In any event, I thought I would pass along some ALF (Academic Lunatic Fringe) flapdoodle / balderdash as recently found on the web ...
....the language of color that’s become synonymous with photography since the 1980s – is the ultimate artificiality now at the core of photography. It is so because it further obfuscates for us the inherent artificiality of photography as a medium ... It seduces us, the viewer, into thinking we’re seeing an objective representation of something real out there, when what we’re really looking at is a piece of paper of abstracted signs .... someone’s coded representation of their subjective interpretation of the real.
If ever there were a textbook definition / example of Susan Sontag's idea that interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art, there (the above quote) you have it. Artspeak gobblegook in its most pure form.
Now I must state that, re: the picture, crumbcake crumbs, in this entry or another picture in any other entry or any picture anywhere on the planet, it's a mystery to me why anyone would want to look at this picture and start by deciphering the "coded representation" and/or figuring out what the "abstracted signs" are and what they point to / indicate, indexical wise, is beyond my imagining.
And, iMo, anyone, even with just 1/2 of a functioning brain, would know that this picture is not an actual plate of crumbs or cup of coffee. They would know, without any prompting from the ALF crowd, that it is a actual picture of a plate of crumbs and a cup of coffee and there is not a reason in the world to consider its "artificiality" or whether the picture is the result of an "objective" or "subjective" picture making activity.
AN ASIDE: re: objective / subjective. Excluding the world of science and, in some cases, industry, I don't believe there is such a thing as an "objective" picture. I believe every picture made by fine-art and snapshot picture makers is made with a purposeful, aka: subjective intent .... (dictionary definition) based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions. END OF ASIDE
And, surprise, surprise (not). Of course, it could go without writing (but I'll write it nevertheless), the writer of the above quote refers to the act of making a picture as an act of "interpretation".
Apparently, by that designation, I have been quite the fool all these years of my picture making. I thought I was depicting / making representations of things as seen and found in the real world .... or, you know, just making pictures for myself and others to look at.