Light and Shadow.
Elements Interplay.
Rendering the familiar unfamiliar.
A visual deconstruction of the everyday.
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The District 9 Antithesis
The class divide in Singapore is readily apparent to anyone who actually bothers to look for it (and one doesn’t have to even look very hard). While i would not venture so far as to say that this divide is one that akin to a large chasm, it is there, and it is here to stay.There is a startling dissonance between what the state portrays of Singapore as a glitzy (kitschy at times, even) island state set amongst our less well-to-do neighbours and the lived realities of some Singaporeans whom reside in the the poorer neighbourhoods.
Scenes from Macpherson.
Objective / Subjectivity: A Problematique
With the proliferation of the camera as a tool for capturing scenes and images of the everyday, a critical question must be raised. The camera, as a tool, allows one to stop action and create images of how the photographer perceives and interact with his surrounding.Hence, one would assume, because the image created is a definite representative of a certain reality, it must be true and thus, in all aspects, is objective in nature.
At face value, the logic seems unassailable. However, the fundamental flaw behind this assumption is that the camera can and will reveal all. This ignores the role of the photographer and his own subjectivity in the creation of the image. The choice of colour or black & white, the framing of the shot and other factors such as shutter speed or aperture are choices which affect and determine the final image. The photographer’s interpretation of the environment around him and hence, the social relationships with his subjects are subjectively realised in the final product.
What appears to be objective is infact a subjective realisation and interpretation of an objective reality that factors in existential structural factors. As Bourdieu has so elegantly captured, ‘Only a naive realism sees the photographic representation of reality as realistic; if it appears objective, it is because the rules defining its social use conform to the social defintion of objectivity’.
What irks me is that this is largely ignored, especially in the face of digital photography. Without an active realisation of social realities, photography is practised merely at face value. Here we find the magical photographer who is able to read minds, gifting the images of his subjects titles such as ‘Forlorn’, ‘Sad’, or the like. ( I must admit that i am, at times, prone to this as well). The interpellation of the subject is practiced within the structures of a hegemonic ideology that assumes, and assumes too much.
Evening Prayers at the Masjid Abdul Gaffoor
Reading:
PhotoBox (ISBN 9780500543849)
Avedon, Bresson, Leibovitz, Salgado, Erwitt and company all in one book. What’s there not to like?
Walker Evans
It is interesting how a collection of repetitive photographs, of people, caught unawares on film can be such a poigant reminder of Depression-era America. The subway in itself is a temporal setting, a non-space if you may. The subway as a transitionary space which is non-relational, non-historical and or in any pretext concerned with the identity of the traveller offers an interesting juxtaposition to the commuters that it carries everyday. The placement of people of varying classes, race, religion and beliefs in this non-place renders them (albeit temporally), vulnerable to the lens of the camera, in which they are (almost) removed of their identities. This forces the viewer or reader to view them within the context of a larger structure, the superstructure in this case. Evans’ work is powerful in this sense because he is able to do precisely this. The dislocation of individuals and the stark realization of the social landscape argues for the fact that the faces he portrays are not just faces of random individuals, but rather, faces that represent an era.
Fragile Things: Mono
This time in black and white. I can’t seem to decide if i like the ones with colour more. hmm.
It’s interesting to see how photographing in black and white alters the way i look at objects. When i photograph in colour, the primary concern is well…colour. However, in black and white, one is forced to pay more attention and divert focus upon other concerns such as texture and the like.
The shots here would probably have looked like crap in colour, and vice versa.
Eggleston.
‘I am at war with the Obvious’ - William Eggleston.
William Eggleston’s colour pictures of contemporary America and, essentially, Americana, have been hailed as the advent of colour photography. The beauty in his photographs is that he is able to portray drama, decay and neglect in mundane everyday objects. These pictures, while seemingly snap shot-ish (if ever there was such a word) in nature, really come together when viewed as a set.
Eggleston - Untitled (Peaches) [Source: http://lookingaround.blogs.time.com/2008/10/30/a-talk-with-william-eggleston/]
There is almost a dislocation of reality as Eggleston renders the familiar unfamiliar, as he constantly turns his camera onto the seemingly insignificant objects and scenes of the everyday and provides them with an uneasy sense of importance, made even more striking with the bold hues apparent in all his pictures.
The idiosyncrasy of the everyday and the mundane, indeed.
New Zealand, June 2009.
Vanguard.
The camera is and will always be the great leveller.It is such in the sense that all anonymity, or any pretense that there is a smidgen of it, is far removed by the revealing eye of the lens and the photographer.
The social dynamism of interaction, or rather, what we assume is the social dynamism of interaction is fundamentally ignored by the intruding eye of the camera and it’s curious lens, probing and questioning the existence of the human fabric.
The camera and the photographs it produces are, to me at least, an oxymoron. It reveals yet obscures in tandem.
Fragile Things.
Life in the cracks.
The little things that go unnoticed, forgotten even, in the caphony of life. Quiet, unassuming and seemingly content just being alone.
