pointing

So the experimentation continues as a new week starts with a new project:

After last weeks project i really wanted to slow things down. While i was pleased with the images i had produced they were just too dynamic for me. So i tried to produce a project that was simpler and had the contemplative tone i was after. The result is the image above that has been tentatively, and more than little obviously, called pointing. 

The image is a response to much of the theory that i have been reading recently. This has led me to realise that the photograph is actually quite a vague thing. Nothing much in it is certain and the best it can do is 'point' to something. Whatever meaning, value or qualities we give to the image come more from us, and the context in which we see the image, rather than the image itself.

I am actually quite please with the test run and think there could well be some scope here for a bigger project. Firstly it feels calmer which is a feeling i crave at the moment. The subject is still, the colours muted, and the viewer is not confronted with an action packed scene. There is space for you to think basically and the photograph itself plays a more subdued role.

I want to mention the traffic cone. When i arrived at the park the stick i had was flat ended and was never going to penetrate the soil. I tried a range of things to get the sign propped up but in the end had to resort  to the traffic cone. At the time i was worried as i thought this would spoil the harmony of the image and basically look a bit clumsy. However in the image i think it is arguably my favourite part. It looks slightly engnigmatic and also suggests that the sign is a temporary inclusion. This is clearly not a permanent fixture but something that has been spontaneously put up. It is this temporaneity that accentuates the question why is the sign there? The lack of an answer is in turn emphasised and the image becomes all the more enigmatic. Just goes to show you should not trust you instincts sometimes. 

Just to mention two big influences were John Baldessari Commisioned Paintings and Robert Barry's Inert Gases

By way of an evocative footnote i also started writing my dissertation today. Didn't go well. This is going to be tough........