August 22, 2015

Time is an illusion if we are not aware of its passing.  When you are totally involved in making images with purpose then you have reached a different level of time.  Time seems to stop, as you build your repore with your subject and explore the infinite choices present to create an image with meaning and purpose. The true photographic experience for me is finding a powerful connection with a subject I didn't know very well before I began making images of it.  And then being able to say after the shoot where did the time go!

There has to be a link between you and the environment to create visually exciting images.  Without that link the image becomes a broken down recording of the same old same old.

Susan Sontag, "The photographer was thought to be an acute but non-interfering observer- a scribe, not a poet.  But as people quickly discovered that nobody takes the same picture of the same thing, the supposition that cameras furnish an impersonal, objective images yielded to the fact that photographs are evidence not only of what's there but of what and individual sees, not just a record but an evaluation of the world."

With social media we have the opposite evaluation of image taking.  We have the ignoring of our environment, our surroundings.  Our only goal is to put us in the scene as an impostor to to the visual stimulus that possible attracted us to the scene in the first place. Our being, our human nature revolves around the herd instincts.  Social media loves to corral us into the pen of ego.

In meaningful photography the image creator is looking out from himself toward his subject of interest and not the reverse.  Looking at himself( poser rock) in the environment to be exploited for likes on a media site.

Our moments in time are now realized through snap shot of our lives.  Life now it seems is to close your eyes to first hand experiences.  We live our time through second had jpegs held on a small screen for milliseconds.  We are closing our eyes to living in our world.  We are creating a chimera of our world, a show that supports our growing egos.

We have replaced first hand experience with a buffer between us and the real world.  This buffer (the snap shot selfie) allows us a feeling of control and also gives us something to do when we feel awkward in a social situation.  It is a prop we exploit to build an ego of celebrity.  After all just like chimps we love to imitate.

Photography's common language is memory.  We use photographs now to remember second hand our life experiences.  Experiencing something first hand, being in the moment of passing time, has been replaced with stopping the flow of time to get out your phone or camera and then taking snap shots of the experience, a picture of the experience becomes your manifested life. However, the true experience was cut short so you could interrupt the flow of time and take a few pics of the moments that now represent your forced experience.  But the image is a memory of a fragmented time line and doesn't represent the total scene.

You are the only one that needs to be tuned in to your relationship with your environment and to be able to catch the full force of living through experiences.  Not stopping your flow of time for trivial moments of selfish neurotic narcissistic behavior.

These pockets of moments make up your life history.  These seconds in time are not worth much when broken up into a picture outline of your life.  Separating your moments of life through photography reduces your life to a fragmented series of dislocated events that add up to a random and homogenized snap shot of your world.  Life is continuous motion and change.  In order to experience it fully we must be aware of times limits and gifts.

Frederick Jameson, " We are in the 3rd phase now in multinational consumer capitalism.  With emphasis placed on marketing, selling and consuming commodities not on producing them."

These new technologies make it easier than ever to exploit the masses for selling products.  The use of social media is not real and should not be considered authentic.  It is a means to sell products and ourselves (as commodities) in the corporate media market place.

We never fully grasp the inherent dislocation of self through image taking.  These seconds recorded are spirits that have been preserved for an analytical review.  Never to be touched or comforted on a personal level.

But now we are inundated with so much personal fragments of people's moments in their time line that it can be depressing thinking about all the minds vying for attention.  All the meandering away from living your lives and not broadcasting it for the masses.  The only thing in mind that social media does for you is get you a direct Ad from corporate media to buy their products.