Image Makers/Image Takers and Sally Mann's What Remains

Here are a couple of quotes from Image Makers/Image Takers that resonated with me as a photographer:

   "The key is to photograph your obsessions, whether that's old   people's hands or skyscrapers. Think of a blank canvas, because that's   what you've got, and then think about what you want to see."

        -David LaChapelle


   "Diane Arbus said that you just have to choose a subject and keep photographing it for as long as something comes out of it. You always have to use your own fascinations as a starting point."

   "I like it when everything is reduced to its essence. You try to get things to reach a climax. A moment of truth."

        -both by Rineke Dijstra


         I enjoyed these interviews with various photographers, especially since they were all working with different areas of subject matter. The way that Stephen Shoe discussed photography as being his way of language struck me as an interesting point. Communicating more efficiently with pictures rather than words is an idea that I find completely relevant to my own life and work. I especially liked his analogy of the cross-country roadtrip, during which he kept a journal and found that he recorded only factual, documentational information about where they ate, slept, how much money they spent, etc. While the average journaller might naturally want to create more impressional and emotional journal entry recordings, such as subjective views about the days or how they might feel based on occurances during the trip, Stephen Shore found himself solely recording his own collection of the facts of the trip - thus leaving the impressions and changes in emotion and thought to be conveyed through imagery.

      A couple of the photographers interviewed in this section of the text emphasize the value in taking pictures based on your fascinations, your obsessions, and what you are drawn to. This kind of "from here to there" process is what I am currently interested in...wandering around with the camera, discovering one thing that might lead to another thing, which of course leads to something entirely new and odd, and definitely interesting. Many of the photographers interviewed here also convey a real sense of deep appreciation for found beauty in unexpected areas. This is something that I am currently dealing with directly, both within and outside of my SMP in photography. My process is as follows: I use the camera as a tool through which I explore a space, discover what I like about certain aspects of the space (formally and conceptually), and then try to think about creating an image that utilizes the space in a slightly abstract way. In a way, I have come to think of my photographic process as resembling a person creating a gesture drawing of something: the mission is to get at the essence of whatever is in front of you, and then start to think about a theme or idea that will fuel the work further, as well as fuel the search for new work.

      Sally Mann's incredibly documentary, What Remains was tremendously intersting to me despite the fact that I have already seen it once before. I have previously been very drawn to her Immediate Family series, as is the case with most people who see her work publicly. I'm utterly fascinated with the way that she is able to consistently work with a bulky large format camera in a variety of settings, and consistently be able to produce images that look like they were caught in the moment, almost like an intimate snapshot. However, this time I am more interested in the way that she moves from project to project, and how it seems to me that if you look slightly beyond the surface of the images, that her work has a certain cyclical feel to it. She seems to approach her idea of a photographic mission by spending lots of time thinking about very simple but relatively complex ideas about life, family, landscape, death, decay, rejuvenation, etc. The way that she attempts to comment on change through time is very appealing to me, even though the photographs that I take look visually nothing like the photographs that she produces.
      In her Death series, I was quite drawn to the way that she investigated the idea of emptiness within a body that was once full of life, as well as how she became interested in how this kind of lifeless body transforms the landscape of where it lies once it has passed and began the process of decay. While watching this, I was considering how her approach to her photographic endeavors might relate to my own...and I've recognized that there is a certain similar quality of contemplation and slow but thorough investigation present in both of our works. Images often serve multiple functions both as documentation of a particular place or a particular figure (or lifeless figure) in a particular space, and as a visual and emotional expression.