DURING MY DECADES OF VOLUMINOUS READING, re: photography and its apparatus, I have on numerous occasions come across the expressed idea of “photographs about photography”. That is, pictures that were made intentionally employing one (or more) of the medium’s unique characteristics / attributes in order to create pictures-albeit more commonly an entire body of work-that are uniquely photographic; characteristics / attributes such as, say, the camera’s capability to stop time / isolate a precise real-world moment from the flow of time, or, techniques such as limited / narrow depth of field.
Photograph made in that manner-independent of referent-are often considered, especially by art critics / academics, to be photographs about photography. And I mention the concept cuz it seems that I have started to create a body of work-tentatively titled linear convergence ~ a different perspective-that might be considered to be photographs about photography. Although the referents in these photographs and my picture making intent are typical of all of my previous work, the photographs are a departure from my previous work inasmuch as the format is rectangular and all the photos are made using the ultra-wide angle lens on the iPhone.
That written, I have yet to noodle together an artist statement for this work. That written, I do know what led me to this endeavor - for quite a while I have been futzing around with making pictures using the iPhone PORTRAIT mode. Not so much for making portraits as for making pictures with a narrow DOF. In any event, the PORTRAIT mode produces pictures in the 3x4 format which was I cropping to my preferred square format. However, along the way I started to identify-so to write-with the somewhat strange to me (over the last 3 decades) rectangular format.
ASIDE Which is not to write that I am a stranger to that format cuz I have made a zillion and a half rectangular format pictures over the years using 35mm, 4x5 and 8x10 cameras. Hell, even my medium format camera had a native 6x4.5 rectangular format cuz 90% of my commercial work was made to appear on the “standard” 8.5x11 printed page. So why use a medium format camera with a native square format (Hasselblad) that produces a square picture which needs to be cropped to fit on the printed page? Not to mention the fact that I have always framed and configured my photographs in camera on the ground glass / viewing screen. There is no after-the-picture-making fact cropping in my picture making world. END ASIDE
So it was only a matter of time for me to make a rectangular format picture using the ultra-wide lens on the the iPhone. And, having done so, my eye and sensibilities were pricked by the result cuz I had “discovered” a different kind of form than I had been previously making. However….
…. I am acutely aware that these pictures might be-in fact most likely will be-considered to be rather gimmicky. Ya know, cheap tricks / effects and all. But, in fact, these pictures are an honest / authentic visual expression of the optical characteristics of one of the medium’s tools which, when used to make pictures, create images that are uniquely photography-centric; that is to write, images that can be made only by the means provided by photographic medium.
So, while that provenance qualifies these pictures as being photographs about photography, they will, nevertheless, most likely instigate the question (justifiably so), “What’s the point?” A question to which my response, at this conjuncture, is, quite simply, I like the way the pictures look.
I am also rather delighted by the play on the word perspective as used in the titled to describe the photographs, 1. the art of drawing solid objects on a two-dimensional surface so as to give the impression of their height, width, depth, and position in relation to each other, and, 2. a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view.
In any event, I will keep on exploring this particular point of view for a bit. Who knows where it will go.