Friday, April 11, 2008

A photograph...

I like the idea that images force their way into the personal space of the viewer causing discomfort. This is 'relatively' easy to achieve with scale but requires a more direct confrontation for it to be truly effectual.

The greatest paradox in drei is this invasion of personal space and the associated initial discomfort. Yet the viewer can push past this and discover an intimacy with the protoganist. The best - and frequently used analogy - is the idea of being able to walk straight up to a screaming person and feel their breath. This all without the fear of The Bite.

Unfortunately (?), this is something that can ONLY be experienced in the installation and which is close to impossible to communicate in the book or 'on film'.

On a side note, whilst trying to find a quote from Barthes, I stumbled across this gem.

Excerpt: Put most bluntly, for the past century most photography critics haven’t really liked photographs, or the experience of looking at them, at all. They approach photography—not specific photographs, or specific practitioners, or specific genres, but photography itself—with suspicion, mistrust, anger, and fear. Rather than enter into what Kazin called a “community of interest” with their subject, these critics come armed to the teeth against it. For them, photography is a powerful, duplicitous force to be defanged rather than an experience to embrace.

The great Crisis of the Real.

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