all photos ~ (embiggenable)
A DECADE OR SO AGO I MADE A SERIES OF constructed images / assemblages based upon the concept / question of what is a photograph? The intent was not to find / suggest some kind of universal answer cuz there are so many kinds of photographs with so many kinds of maker’s intent that there can be no simple answer to that question other than to write that a photograph is a picture, i.e. a visual representation of an object, scene, person or abstraction produced on a 2D surface. However ….
…. in an essay on T.O.P.–What Are You Taking a Picture Of?–it has been suggested that if you think you are taking a picture of a subject / what the camera recorded, a moment, the light, reality, you are sadly mistaken ….
“The images in your library are not pictures of people or places or light. They are fossils …. the fossil does not merely remind us of the past. It becomes the past. The photograph stops being a trace of the event and starts being the event itself, the only version that survives. What was once evidence becomes the thing it was evidence of.”
Right from the get-go this essay is problematic; in the first sentence the definition of the word image–a representation of the external form of a person or thing in art–contradicts the remainder of that sentence. That is, if you have images, you have visual representations of an object, scene, person or abstraction, aka: pictures. FULL STOP.
And, I’ve got news for the author, it is the literal visual representation in a picture, aka: the subject as seen in a picture, which is the impetus for 90%* of picture takers for taking a picture; they want to take a picture of what something looks like at a given moment in time. And guess what–those pictures always have a subject (what the camera recorded) which includes the light, color, and other visual elements–most commonly referred to as reality**. Ya know, what mama’s smile looks like, what the Roman fountain looks like, what the colorful autumn scene looks like, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum.
The value of these pictures is 2-fold; 1) they can illustrate quite convincingly–a reasonable facsimile–what the subject of the picture looked like at the moment of its taking, and, 2) on future viewings they can also remind us of the past / incite memories of the subject, the time, and the place of their taking. However, that written, a warning ….
…. if a picture of a recorded past occurrence “starts being the event itself”, I would suggest seeking immediate mental health support in order to deal with your demonstrably apparent delusional disorder.
*10% might be trying to make art. Both %s are estimates.
**on that topic, if you wanna start dancing on the head of pin, I’m gonna send you to bed without your supper.