Assumptions

 

 

A camera is a device for trapping light. It comes with a lens, a shutter and a number of assumptions.

 

A photograph is transparent. Unlike a painting, it’s surface has no texture. It appears to be a window on the world; the boundary  separating here from there (and now from then) is invisible.

 

A photograph is an illusion, the performing of a cunning trick. It is perfectly camouflaged, the ultimate vanishing act. The allure of a photograph lies in it’s artlessness, the easy realism. A photograph doesn't draw attention to itself  

 

As an activity, photography is so reasonable, so self-assured, it seems churlish to question it’s orthodoxy.  The shooter has an inordinate amount of faith in  both weapon and  target; the trophy feels inevitable.

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Photographing something establishes an implicit power relationship towards it; it is owned.

 

What a photograph is of is assumed to be what it's about -though  no-one  thought Cezanne, who painted apples, was a grocer. 

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I work with the tensions which arise from these assumptions and with a machine which aims to see only surface and now.