Rocky Mountains ~ Winter 2009
A photographer’s reality is what he or she wants to show.
Fred Picker
Reality is always dependent upon the observer not the observed. Point of view is dependent on one’s proximity to an object being observed as well as the angle of observation of the observer. While the object remains what one sees is dependent on one’s angle of exposure to the object. One way of thinking about this is to imagine one’s self at a baseball game. Let’s say you were sitting directly behind home plate about ten rows up in a box seat. Now suppose your best friend is sitting directly opposite you in center field. While each is watching the same game (the object remains the same with or without an observer) you both see a very different game unfold before your eyes. Even the persons sitting directly in front, directly behind and to each side of you will see a slightly different game played out, though not as dramatically as the game your friend observes from center field.
If two photographers stood on precisely the same spot at the same moment in time (an impossibility) each equipped with the same model camera, the same lens and the same tripod, the shots they chose to re-present as finished images will not be the same. Everything is dependent on the observer and the trace experience of that observer which, in turn, is translated as one’s vision.
The photographs I make are mine, in line with my experience and my vision. What I chose and how I chose to re-present those images is a statement of my vision, the way in which I see the world, my reality. As one observes my images they are transported into a brief moment of my vision and as they stand removed from the object contained within the four corners of the photograph (the photograph is now the object not the object in the photograph) they are invited to transcend their own experience and integrate the image into their own sense of being thereby creating still a new reality.
The Rocky Mountains ~ Winter 2009 by Roger Passman, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
