That is definitely the way I like my whiskey, but not the way I like to make my photographs. I have an aversion to straight photography. I guess most people would call that type of image making, “Documentary”. While there is certainly a place for it, from newspaper stories to projects exploring identity and culture, this is one really excellent example, an exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian, it is a very basic way of engaging with photography.
After one of my many bouts with my reasons for making an image, I have come to realize that I can’t make a straight image. When I do, I find that they are not satisfying. I have always been aware of the fact that what we actually perceive isn’t the whole story. Our perceptual systems are not perfect and just the basic physics of the universe make it unlikely that we are actually perceiving what is actually out there. What exists when we are not around.
As I have discussed previously, my introduction to photography was through the work of Minor White and the Heliographers practicing in the middle of the last century. These photographers didn’t document facts, they attempted to visualize the mystery inherent in the Universe. As Walter Chappell, an acolyte of Minor White, once said, “Photograph to remember what you have not yer seen.”
Also, the work being done in Japan around this same time by photographers like Daido Moriyama and the Provoke cooperative. My all time favorite Japanese practitioner of photography was and is Masahisa Fukase. His master work, The Solitude of Ravens was a revelation to me. The center of their practice and perception is in some secret, interior place. Actually the practice of these Japanese photographers was in direct rebellion to the previous generation of photographers whose members like Ken Domon practiced and advocated straight, documentary style images.
Although Japanese photography has made strong inroads in the west, Minor White and his practice seems to have fallen out of fashion. Documentary images a la Alec Soth and photographs exploring photography itself seems to be all the rage. This is not for me. I’ll take my whiskey straight and my photo practice with a twist of metaphysics and mystery.
Force Of Seeing 