Over the past few years, I have moved further away from straight photography in my creative practice. Any follower of this blog will have known that I have taken various drastic departures in pursuit of image making. At the same time, I’ve struggled with the fact that a “photograph” by is intrinsically representational.
Regardless of whatever manipulation one does: with lens or camera choices, post exposure manipulation (both analog and digital) there are still the fingerprints of some direct representation of the world within the image. This continues to be a quandary for me to deal with creatively. I have been revolting against the stream of similarity of images on social media: the impermanence and banality of even the most technically proficient photographs. Interesting subject matter or interesting concepts represented in a straight photographic manner for one reason or another has lost its appeal to me.
And yet. As I wrestle with this paradox I am looking for a detente of sorts. One small step I have recently taken is to carry around a small point shoot some camera with me. Through my daily obligations and travels I’ve been snapping photos of anything that happens to catch my eye at a certain point. I try not overthink the relevance of the subject matter, nor the technical approach. At the same time I am creating straight still photographs of the world around me.
This week I developed two rolls of the film I shot and it is still curious to me that even the most throwaway images seem to possess some kind of extra power when locked forever in silver halide on a roll of film. What might become of these images? Nothing, most likely. However, spending an evening developing, then scanning and studying his images has served some form of emancipation from my internal struggles with the work I create. There is still something quite alluring about seeing 36 images lined up on a sheet of paper. This current practice of mine, resulting in a contact sheet to meditate upon, is well worth the time invested.
