This Century Belongs to light. . .

On Photography

 

 Laszlo Maholy-Nagy wrote in 1927on the nature of photography and the path it might take summing that ‘This century belongs to light’. He presented photography as a modernist medium in this sense. He writes: ‘In today’s photographic work, the first and foremost issue is to develop an integrally photographic approach that is derived purely from the means of photography itself’ [i] In other words, learning the process of photography, learning how to paint with light. He then goes on to predict that: ‘only after a more or less exact photographic language has been developed will a truly gifted photographer be able to elevate it to an “artistic” level. [ii] I relate to this prediction by the way I reflect on my development practicing photography. I began experimenting with this medium in 1996. My experiments aimed to develop a basic vocabulary of the medium focusing on representation of objects under the influence of light. Now I have that language, representation of objects through imagery is not what I am seeking with this medium. The primary subject in photography is light energy. Why not just concentrate on that? And what is illuminated by this light that we don’t usually see in a certain way.  I use light like a sculptor uses wood. I give it shape and existence. This to me is the true language of photography. ‘Photography is the first means of giving tangible shape to light, though in a transposed – and perhaps just for that reason – almost abstract form.’ [iii]

 My initial aim as a photographer is not to imitate the human eye, what is the uniqueness in that? ‘Familiarity breeds not so much contempt as blindness’ [iv] I want to record what the human eye does not see. Taking light as my foreground and molding it around life in a new unseen perspective

Our sense of sight of the twenty first century is routinely focused on photographic representations of life through lenses and then airbrushed to ideals, and then infectiously displayed through advertising mechanisms. We are so confronted by images that we have adapted this new way of seeing and then forgetting. ‘It is proven,  that the human eye can only process three per cent of visible light, meaning that we cannot see 97 per cent of what is in front of our faces. There are worlds upon worlds in front of us.’ [v]  3% we see, so where is the other 97%? This is where my methods of inquiry are striving towards; to capture, making visible the invisible.

I have chosen to test and cross the boundaries of the normal photographic split-second vision. I choose to give time form because time holds form together. When I produce photographic works, time is always a primary element in the process. Exposure times are as long as I choose to let the light in and make something of a certain space, therefore this path of time is recorded in the photograph rendering it as something else, something which is not limited to its immediate visual appearance but goes beyond those boundaries to capture energy and experiences within a time scale. I capture my breathing body as it breaths, I give time and breathing- life visual form. I capture the landscape as it folds around me, embodying me, I capture the real experiences of my life within this otherness which constitutes.

My photographic strategy is to record times that have the possibility for things to happen and reveal themselves through process. This way of working has a spontaneous beauty where basically, I as the artist don’t quite know what I am painting. I don’t have that initial idea for a vision to put out to the world. All I have is the idea for the process, where I am going to stand and act to let the light into that situation. I have little control over what the shape the light will turn into and reveal. This is unpredictable photography where no two images could ever be the same. So partly the process takes over and the work makes itself. I am the physical medium for the idea to become physical. I am the channel in which natural phenomena and chance events are filtered through.

Wolf Vostell declared art to be: ‘the total event… a merging of elements, so that life {man} can be art… [A] happening is direct art in a cathartic sense realization of raw experiences and psychic recovery through conscious use of the inner freedom in man’ Vostell argued that, by ‘taking everyday occurrences out of their context’, spectators {and perhaps also artists?} will be encouraged to be more open to understanding ‘the absurdities and demands of life’. ‘As Alan Kaprow insisted of Happenings, ‘{t}he line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct as possible’. [vi]

Although after acting out a process I only result in a single static image, the emphasis is on the process as a whole and the image is the residue from that. The residue of my actions does not always compose recognizable images of them. It is discovery and exposure rather than a portrayal. My actions in the process are to capture essence not resemblance. My processes and residues as a whole trace the consequences of certain action over time in certain places. Optical, chemical, bodily and mechanical experimental techniques within the realms of light, are central to my practice were I intensively and ritualistically explore the potentials of natural phenomena.

So rather than technical sophistication dwelling in the world of digital squares and complexity, I am concerned with invention. I invent ways to allow light to make form. I then direct that process invention into a particular inquiry like - what does my breathing look like? Sometimes this works the other way around, I may have the inquiry before the process and then have to invent the process. A significant observation to my working methods is their simplicity, although this way of working, with continuous experimentation and developing strategies often demands much endurance and faith {and temper tantrums}.

Referring back to Maholy- Nagy’s prediction, this century does belong{s} to light but the light has blinded us and now goes unseen. We strive to become what light ideally illuminates. The neon blue flickering rhythm of widescreen slim lined TV’s bask on the ceiling of every house hold, the photo-text messages that we fill our time sending straight up thousands of miles and then vertically back down again to other being yards away.  We are mechanical creatures now and the pure splendor of light as source is dismissed.  I hope to be able to take this light and shape it to illuminate things we haven’t seen before.

 

Phenomenology of

  Perception

  

 

Phenomenology is the study of essences and existence, where the world is already there before reflection begins. The intentions of this philosophy are concerned with re-attaining a direct and primitive contact with the world. It is an explanation on space, time and the world as we live them. The world is a changing tide which shifts with the moon light. The thought of freezing these times into an overall account is a battle for the ship wrecked mind. This is a philosophy which starts with reduction. Merleua-Ponty writes: ‘It would seem that reduction takes me away from the common world and locks me into a private {phenomenologically reduced} world of my own. [i]  Merleau- Ponty’s definition of reduction is that of where one becomes fully aware of their relation to the world and to the other subjects with which they share the world. It is a rediscovery of their actual presence of self. The fact is we never experience anything but states of ourselves. These states are usually created from the cause and effects of otherness. There are things outside us that affect us inside. Because we all live in a universal world and interact with it, our actions can shoot, hit, and bounce onto other beings creating states and sensations. With reduction in mind; it would seem that in my practice with ventography, reduction takes me away from the common world and reduces me to a private individual world of my own. The process of simply breathing with mindfulness in a meditative state, and capturing that visually is reduction at it foremost. Through this process I become absolutely aware of my relation to the world and the otherness that I inhale and breathe into.

Christopher Macann comments on the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty ‘Be that as it may, the nature and character of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology does at least make it clear that, in philosophy, the most difficult thing to understand is what is most obvious, that what is nearest {in being} is furthest away {in analysis}.’  [ii] In relation to the issues that I am dealing with in my practice, I can relate to these difficulties because I believe that I have uncovered something so simple and pure but yet so unimaginable and far away; almost disconnected but ultimately not. I have the same struggle defining the substance of my work.

Merleau-Ponty states ‘I am the absolute source, my existence does not stem from my antecedents, from my physical and social environment; instead it moves out towards them and sustains them, for I alone bring into being for myself.  [iii]  My mind is struggling to comprehend with these types of ideas. I feel like my higher self understands these ideas but my physical being self is perplexed. We are each the source/result of everything that is around us. We interact with it only to create it. Our presence discharges out into the world making alterations and actions in a steady sustainable pattern {most of the time} and our actions define us.

The Body as object and mechanistic – ‘I am a body which rises towards the world. Thus exteroceptivity demands that stimuli be given a shape, the consciousness of the body invades the body, the soul spreads over all its parts, and behaviour overspills its central sector. Cannot I find in the body message, wires sent by the internal organs to the brain, which are installed by nature to provide the soul with the opportunity of feeling its body? Consciousness of the body, and the soul, are thus repressed. The body becomes the highly polished machine which the ambiguous notion of behaviour nearly made us forget.’ Maurice Merleau-Ponty.[iv] We have become so physically dependent that our sense of sight has taken over but also lost its vision. We see surfaces but not what’s beneath and maybe in front. Kant comments on our mode of representation: ‘Our representation of things, as they are given, does no conform to these things as they are in themselves, but [that] these objects as appearances conform to our mode of representation.’ [v]

Hidden beneath our representation of things, within these objects as appearances are sights unobserved to the untrained eye. There are images of the inner world which forms the object.  ‘To have imagination and to be aware of it is to benefit from possessing an inner richness and a spontaneous and endless flood of images. It means to see the world in its entirety, since the point of the images is to show all that escapes conceptualization.’ [vi]

In my work I am conceiving a philosophy of vision which is just as unknown to me as it is to you. We see only what we look at. I have made the invisible visible. This becomes philosophy because it is something unseen.

‘The Invisible – Beyond sight of the body, the realm of the unseen phenomena.’  [vii]

Merleau-Ponty comments on the invisible: ‘The invisible is not exactly visible but could be.’ [viii]  Physically we collect and arrange the life before us but as we do this we also create and move the invisible. My work reflects the correspondence of photography and philosophy. “‘a solar language of cognition that gives the mind and the senses access to the invisible”  [ix]