Ric Spencer writes today in The West about Transient States which is currently on show at Lawrence Wilson Gallery.
Photography itself is, of course, a temporal art form, defined by its own inability to move beyond the frame of its moment. This immediate past tense to present viewing makes photography's obsession with temporal subject matter all the more natural.I tend to disagree with the notion that photography, as any art forms, are necessarily limited by notions of how they might be created.
One could - dangerously - apply that same standard to any artform that is gestural in nature or process-based. Does representational painting done under self-enforced duress function only in that moment? What of context? Surface? Metaphor?
Consider a circle framed so that only two-thirds are visible... does the eye not complete the image? In particular regards to photography, there is the awareness - I would hope - that images are snippets and any movement in any direction - physically, chronologically, intellectually and emotionally - still functions irrelevant of any pictorial representation.
I've recently been writing a bit about truth in images and I like this idea of what's the factually-correct image for any given situation.
Consider the 2008 Israeli/Palestinian conflict in Gaza. The New York Times was extensively criticised for showing an image of Israeli soldiers relaxing near a green field (1) whilst 40 Palestinians, among them women and children, had been killed the day before. Equally an image of a child's bloody face would have been criticised for emotional manipulation. What then would have been ideologically-, chronologically- and objectively-speaking, factual?
(1) Erlanger, S.: Israel Resumes Attack After Pause for Aid Delivery. Image by Moises Saman (NY Times, January 7, 2009). See Sanguinetti, A.: On editorial responsibility (Magnum’s Blog, January 14, 2009).
See also: http://zebrafactory2.blogspot.com/2009/01/on-other-hand.html
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