The photograph is an artifact of an existential event, not the event itself. The image re-presents a moment frozen in time, a moment that can only occur once, that infinitely brief moment in which one scratches the surface of the ineffable thereby embedding traces of the existential moment in one’s conscious mind. The event occurred, the photographer captured that moment (actually as near to that moment as possible because there is an ever so brief physical time differential from decision to snap the shutter and the actual physical snapping of the shutter) that is always already gone.
|
|||||||
 |
The instant the shutter snaps the image in the photographer’s viewfinder is already gone, replaced by an infinite number of new images that, while appearing the same, are subtly different. A drift of a cloud, the movement of shadows, the whisper of a breeze all contribute to the always already changing scene. The photograph captures a moment in time defined generally in fractions of seconds, each with a precise beginning and a precise end, each containing an infinite number of existential moments, those boundless and infinitely brief moments in which one encounters the world. These moments are constantly being replaced by new moments as we scratch the surface of the infinite other. I tend to photograph landscapes alone, walking trails that mark particular journeys that sometimes inspire great awe and other times simply leave me flat. While I am walking I am always looking at my surroundings finding photographs that cry out to me. I explore a subject moving around and through the area I am shooting, Some shots work and others do not. What is important is that I work to capture the instant of inspiration in the four corners of the image. Just what is “that other reality” Uelsmann is talking about? That other reality begs the question of what is reality in the first place. So let’s begin this brief exploration. If one understands reality as the existential lived experience, the life in which one is contextualized by family, friends, accidents of birth, national origins, tribal and religious affiliation, and so on, it is not inconceivable to argue that the lived experience is but a set of trace memories embedded in one’s consciousness that narrates the story of one’s life. In this view, experience cannot be measured or timed. Reality exists but only in the always already gone moment of the existential encounter with the infinite. Such encounters feel like temporality because of the human tendency to embed traces of memory that, when strung together, create the appearance of existence in time. I photograph nature. My motivation is simple, straightforward. By photographing nature I meditate on the nature of the self as a participant in a lived experience. I learn more about me than I ever learn about the places I photograph. The image in this post was made at Lake La-Aqua-Na State Park just outside of Lena, Illinois. Trees exploded into bright Fall colors and the lake was calm and inviting in spite of the crisp morning air. And I had this magnificent landscape all to myself this October morning; there was not another soul to be found to experience the awe of the Fall as the woods prepare for Winter hibernation. The very act of looking changes perception, the subject, the context, everything. Looking at something changes the way one thinks about that which is observed. Looking at something alters the thing itself by removing that which is observed from obscurity to the forefront of observation. All this takes place in the moment of experience, that moment in which all things may be changed by one’s action, in the case in point, the act of looking. Photographing the landscape (or anything else for that matter) is about the awe engendered by scratching the limits of the infinite without crossing over into the unknowable. The photographic image is one that, for all practical purposes although not theoretical purposes, freezes a precise moment in time, a moment generally measured by fractions of seconds. The exposure that occurs when the shutter is clicked, however, is measurable in temporal terms. There is a start and an end of the exposure and, while it may be measured in tiny fractions of a second, the resulting image is but a simulacrum of the infinite, a brief stopping of the flow of time capturing something that would not be seen without the photographer creating the image of what he or she sees and will never be seen again in the particular details of either place or time. In the former sense, the photograph presents an artifact of existence, of time removed from the continuum of temporality. On the other hand, the photograph, by both capturing what the photographer sees and because the image represents a moment in time scratches the limits of the infinitely brief, immeasurable moment of existence. Photographs, by their very nature, rub up against the infinite. The photograph itself is made in the briefest span of time, freezing a moment that will never occur again. The photograph takes one to the very edge of the infinite but not quite. The photograph captures a moment in time. It is bound by the edges of the fractions of seconds an exposure is made and not by the always already gone moment of existence that is timeless and eternal in its infinitely brief and constantly replaced moment. I have argued that the photograph captures the simulacrum of the existential moment, that moment always already gone that implants trace memory to provide the illusion of linear temporality. If one takes this a step further, the image that is captured is that of the photographer’s existential moment; the moment of capture that is the photographer’s alone yet is shared with others through the visual medium of the printed image. What one views is the artifact of the photographer’s vision frozen in time, never to be repeated by anyone ever. |
  |
|||||
|
Copyright © 2010 rogerpassmanPHOTOGRAPHY and Roger Passman. All Rights Reserved 155 queries. 4.262 seconds. Copy Protected by Tech Tips's CopyProtect Wordpress Blogs. |
|||||||
