I Spy With My Little Eye
What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
Anonymous
The other day I was reading an article about
photography and how this developed throughout the 19th century. They
illustrated this by all kinds of different pictures from a private collection. It's
funny to see how the material can influence the way it's been used and even the
subject matter that's been printed on it. The same naturally goes with painting
a picture (which still can bring up the debate if the impressionists for
example started painting outside because there were paint tubes or that they
started painting outside and then
there were paint tubes... Makes a whole
other story).
Now my original thought was that this private
collection was brought together as an illustration of the development of
photography and the usage of it, because that's the story it told me. Although
that story can indeed be perfectly held against the collection, it's actually a
more themed based assembly than a chronological timeframe. Namely, if you
looked with your eyes instead with your brain, you'll noticed that on every
picture there was a typewriter depicted. Every typewriter, as every picture, is
different depending on when it [the photograph] was taken. The owner of the
collection, Dr. Peter Weil from the university of Delaware, is all over the
moon about the typewriter. A part of his typewriter-based collection is thus
photography of the 19th century (aka old pictures with typewriters
on it).
The angle of a collection influences the way a story
can be told. Someone's collection of pictures of typewriters from the 19th
century can be another's –perfect- example of the development of photography
during the 19th century. It takes another view (and maybe another
background or thought process or even another set of eyes) to shine a light
onto something and to find a different angle. There are so many different
stories hidden away within the same collection (or even within a single photograph
on its own). Just look at a photo and see how many stories it can tell you based
on the surface and depiction. It's very important to take the time and to
actually look at something.
When you look long into the abyss, the abyss looks
into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Some time ago there was an article in the newspaper
whereby people were asked to actually look at a painting. Most people walk by,
take a glance for two or three seconds and are off again to the next thing. The 'experiment' that the newspaper (now to think of it, it could also be a
magazine...) conducted was to lock someone up with a single artwork for a
couple of hours, forcing them to look at it and to actually concentrate on the single
work. A woman (it also may have been a man, not sure really) described her
experience with it as it being absolutely terrible in the first hour, then
after two hours she couldn; t look at it anymore, after three hours she saw
something she hadn't seen before, at four hours she was intriguingly studying
the artwork, at five hours she was intensively staring at it and after six
hours (roughly taken, the timescale may be different from what I've described,
but it's more an illustration than an accurate re-telling of the story as you might've guessed) she didn't want
to leave the room just yet because she was so taken by the art. Actually
looking at something can thus change your (in)sight of the whole thing.
The same sort of principle has been used by the artist
Yuri Suzuki when he had a sound installation at the Tate Britain. As he says in the video, nowadays
we're used to digital music whereby we can hop around and skip and go back and
go forth and go back again with everything we listen to (guilty as charged).
But with a jukebox -his installation existed out of jukeboxes- you're forced to
listen to the song you've chosen. You'll have to sit there and listen to it for
the whole four or so minutes, which brings another experience to it than the
(easiness) of digital music. You actually have to listen and dedicate your time to the song you've chosen. The music
on its own corresponds naturally to the atmosphere in the room. You, as a
visitor, would be responsible for the atmosphere in the room to all the other
visitors. So it not only forces you
to listen to it for four or so minutes, but it also forces everyone around you to listen to it for four or so minutes. You've
got a certain responsibility towards not only yourself, but also the ones with
you and the atmosphere and experience they take with them from it.
Sometimes there's more in a moment that can be
captured than you can even realize (especially at that moment). I think it's
important from time to time to take a step back and just look and listen to the
things surrounding you. You often get aware of things you didn't even knew
existed.
Love,
Dominique
Love,
Dominique
1 comments
So true. Everybody sees different things in a picture.
ReplyDeleteThat's why there are sometimes heated discussions between people....
love, Marjan