I’ve been having an email exchange with Bruce Nall about issues raised at my final review with Stephen Yates at Photo Lucida. The conversation revolves around the notion of photographic sketching. Steven and I got on the topic when I mentioned my great delight at seeing Turner’s sketches of Venice, on exhibit at the Correr Museum while I was there. I felt I was following in his footsteps, sometimes literally, in my need to make something of Venice’s inimicable shape and texture. Which led to the discussion about my digital captures of the city.
I have not considered those photos to be the "work" I was doing in that city. I used the digital camera to stretch and limber up my eye at the beginning of the day. When I felt warmed up, then I’d set up the tripod and the "real" camera. What Stephen was suggesting is that my skteches are no less valuable as final artifacts than Turner’s, and merit further investigation.
I have fallen into a bit of a trap with the destination aspect of the work I do. I photograph much less when I am at home and my day is filled with the minutia of administering my business. When I go on my errands, I frequently don’t have a camera with me. Photography is a special modality, carved away from my ordinary life (either as a foreign trip or as an assignment). Or I pre-sort my intention into piles, labeled "stock" or "fine art" or "assignment." Less often than I like to admit, do I engage in simple play.
Bruce has made a deliberative effort to pursue a "sketch" mind in his recent work. He is incorporating sketching as an almost ritualistic mode. The sketches are his point of view during a daily hike on a trail near his home.
Someone who takes the sketch notion to a lovely place is Martin Stabler in his Daily Sightings. An amateur in the best sense of the word, he sends a daily email with an attached image. The best of them are poetics glimpses of something captured in passing.
So the challenge—to make my ordinary life something to capture, worthy or not, with no intention or preconception.
(shirt in the hallway--Sunday pre-laundry sort)
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