645 medium format camera / transparency film ~ all photos ~ (embiggenable)
µ4/3 / square format
iPhone / square format
iPhone / full frame
8x10 view camera / color negative film
IN A RECENT T.O.P. ENTRY MIKE JOHNSTON prattles on (and on and on and on), re: that whatever a picture maker’s intent, meaning-wise, a viewer will make of it whatever they want, influenced by what mental / emotional makeup he/she brings to the viewing. A postulation which is totally dependent upon the idea that a photograph is capable of possessing / communicating a meaning. An idea that I-and many others-reject.
Unfortunately, iMo, the art world has, over time, reached a point wherein content-what a piece of art “says”-is valued over form-what a piece of art looks like. Me?… I subscribe to K. B. Dixon’s idea that:
“The contemporary fine-art establishment is a coalition of vested interests. They are not doing the medium any favors by relegating the idea of “visual interest” to the scrap-heap of philistinish pleasures. In a photograph, as in a painting, the photographer wants to see something he wants to look at. He does not want some ancillary item—some half-baked idea of intellectual profundity.”
Call me a philistine but I much prefer visual interest in a photograph-or any art form-over “intellectual profundity”. Or, to put in another way, I believe a photograph is meant to be seen, not “read”. I want a photograph to hit me in the eye like big pizza pie cuz that’s amore. If you wanna read, get a book.
I believe Susan Sontag got it right when she wrote:
“Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy… the very muteness of what is, hypothetically, comprehensible in photographs is what constitutes their attraction and provocativeness.” ~ Susan Sontag
I also think she got right again when she wrote:
“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. ”
That’s cuz I believe that, if you want to suck the life out of a photograph-or any piece of art-try turning it into words instead of letting it seduce and captivate your visual senses.
FYI the pictures in this entry are meant to represent the fact that there is no “magic” format for creating interesting form. No cropping was employed in processing / editing these photos - full frame only.