I have to confess I love Moby Dick without being able to understand it. It’s mainly read as a rollicking sea yarn of a man’s quest for revenge which ultimately destroys not only him but everything around him. It’s worthy of great book status for the way it tells that parable alone.
Best of all though are the chapters in between the narrative that are contemplations on different aspects of whaling. Somehow Herman Melville manages to make each essay profoundly relevant to the experience of existing which is common ground to all.
The photograph below was selected for exhibition in last years Schubert Ulrich (the what? I hear you say). It’s a straight street photograph and I submitted the quote from the chapter called “The Fountain” as my artist’s statement. It’s basically saying seeing is not believing but Melville’s use of language, well it gets me in!
Imagine two people talking, and one asks the other to describe the spout.
“But why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject? Speak out! You have seen him spout; then declare what the spout is; can you not tell air from water?
My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to settle these plain things. I have found your plain things the knottiest of all. And as for this whale spout, you might almost stand in it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely.”
Art Photography, Street Photography, Was Herman Melville the first Post Modernist without knowing it?
(Wednesday, 10 March 2010)
Phillip Adams often jokes on Late Night Live that he only has one listener and she’s called Gladys. I used to think it was just Gladys and me with this website. Ten weeks ago the site traffic began to be monitored.
I’m not sure what is usual but it was a surprise because I didn’t think you cared at all Gladys. So thanks but would be nice though if the relationship developed into a two way thing. I won’t get my hopes up, let’s just wait and see.
(Wednesday, 10 March 2010)
I usually avoid thinking of the wedding I’m about to photograph, but driving to Kristy and Steve’s it was different.
On the way through Tewantin I called in on a friend who I hadn’t seen for 30 years. She is the mother of a family I stayed with sometimes on school holidays and our lives were loosely entwined for pretty much all my teenage years. Rose showed me a photo album full of old photographs from the seventies and eighties. Amongst them where ones that were either washed out, contrasty, faded, scratched or out of focus. It’s funny though, they all had the same transporting effect and all bought up palpable feelings of long forgotten times and places.
Afterwards as I headed down to Perigian I thought that’s exactly what I want my wedding photo’s to be about. That humble little photo album packed so much emotional wallop and it reconfirmed with me the choices I make and priorities I have when shooting a wedding (and afterwards during editing). In thirty years I don’t want anyone looking at wedding photo’s I’ve taken and say “wasn’t the photographer clever, look how perfect everything is” or “what beautiful light”. I’d much rather they say affectionately to each other “look at us, that’s how we were”. Don’t get me wrong I value good technique and love stylish portraiture, but if I’m not getting the real stuff too, then it’s a missed opportunity.
Real wedding photography, Noosa, Perigian, Tewantin 2008
(Wednesday, 24 February 2010)
There’re two types of performance photography, each in many ways the opposite of the other. Rehearsal photography involves a virtually empty room with even (but usually low) lighting, actor/s and a director, often an assortment of designers, sound composers and lighting specialists and occasionally the playwright, all meeting to discuss and perform the script. Over three hours or so there may be the same 5-10 minute scene repeated over and over interspersed with discussion. The trick is to get variety.
Production photography is recording the performance in its finished form with costumes, and often with bright constantly changing, high contrast lighting, you’ve got no idea what will happen next and there’s only one chance to get it.
My first production shoot for The Queensland Theatre Co. was “The Orphanage Project” in 2003. Written by the very talented Angela Beitzen, the play was an alternate history of Australia from the veiwpoint of the non-beneficiaries of settlement and society in general. She teamed up with director Leticia Carceras plus an ensemble of youthful actors and production professionals to deliver a poignant reminder about a wrong this country was collectively denying at the time. It was a stinging volley of shots during the long dark years of the “Howard Culture Wars”. Bravo.
Queensland Theatre Compant 2003
(Wednesday, 24 February 2010)
If I was to mention Post-modernism seriously, then those of you who’ve managed to read this far may be thinking “here we go …pretentious wanker”. But I’ll have a go; it’s a bit like speaking up for someone who has helped you out.
I’m not welded on to any beliefs, but P-M explains why the world can never be explained (if you’ve noticed). Simple insights like; things are more than the sum of their parts, and the truth depends on who is standing where and when, seem obviously true.
Why is it a such a misunderstood and maligned measure of the world? Anyway that can wait.
In the meantime here’s a minute in the life of a bird in a cage.
Art Photography, Polaroid Art, Lismore pet Shop 2001, Post Modernism ain't so bad.
(Wednesday, 24 February 2010)