The Benefit to Being Conspicuous While Photographing
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Loading... - Anna Pedersen
- 24 Oct 2022
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A photograph can reveal some deep human truths, but even the most intricate images may not divulge in a self-referential way. A deeply intimate scene could have been made from very impersonal practices, and similarly one could use a respectful, peaceful photographic approach to produce something obscene.
When viewing a photograph removed from context, without a contact sheet, or behind-the-scenes insight into how that photographer works there is not always an easy path to intuiting how that image was made. I think that access to the result alone without an understanding of the process makes it easy for some to simply project how they think it was achieved, or how it ought to be done differently.
If you have a background in studio photography you may look at an image and critique what you would have done differently with positioned lights, colored gels, set dressing, and so on. That is the context you may bring and project onto a photograph that wasn’t made with any kind of studio methods of the sort. The way a nature-oriented photographer experiences a studio photograph may be similarly “contaminated”, just as with an academic’s reading of abstract artistry or a solely-digital photographer’s reading of a lacquered tin type. We simply can’t always derive method from form. Read More...
