"I like people, but not that much...."
"African futurist" on Flickr once observed that I "liked people, but not that much. People lost in space.' I think that is a very valid statement that underlies my approach.
My approach is primarily about low resolution image harvests generating photo references. It is not about mega-pixels although it very much about the pixel. It has to do with how the images come out and the way I interact or or more correctly don't interact with the people in the pictures. It is a slow process, harvesting these images and then looking again (and again) at them over time on the screen.
This process separates me from the subjects. The first time I am really looking at the capture is on the computer screen. That can can be days, weeks, months or more after taking them. I am in a different place literally and figuratively. It allows my imagination to work more freely on the reality of what was captured. So there is this distance. A distance of time. A distance of space. These are images of images of that space, that distance. The space between me and the world.
When I begin working on these, really seeing what's there - the subject is no longer there. However on the screen they glow and take on a life - so part of the transformation is that the subject becomes an object. The representative becomes representational.
The look of the result isn't in the detail or sharpness any more. It is in the actual viewing experience on screen. And seeing transformed and and go from 640 x 480 to a 19" screen, you can take in the whole scene - all jewel like and glowing.
So the use of photography is different. It is not the decisive moment frozen. It is a more measured purposeful encounter - the creation of the physical object. This is what I consider to be the "art". The screen image or the photographic print is the object, the document of my process where the image becomes an image of itself. An event takes place but the viewer doesn't experience that. They experience the idea of that. And ideally the viewer will have an experience where they will respond to the pictures - think about their own memories, perceptions and premonitions.
What I love is this process that you can go outside right now and capture something and then transform and present them as an idea, my imagination of the experience rather than the experience itself. There is alot of imagination in reality. You just have to look for it.
