One Side Or The Other
PHOTOGRAPHY
is the paradigm of the inherently equivocal
connection between self and world
–its version of the ideology of realism
sometimes dictating an effacement of the self
in relation to the world,
sometimes authorizing an aggressive relation
to the world which celebrates the self.
One side or the other of the connection
is always being rediscovered and championed.
-excerpt, Photographic Evangels, On Photography by Susan Sontag, p. 123
I joined a group of friends to discuss a play by Sophocles, Antigone. Sophocles, composing his play around 441 BCE was by no means of a mind like most 21st century Americans. His story does not have a happy ending. The message of the tale is not “good news,” as it portrays a rift within the fabric of our need to be true to the bonds between those closest, a brother or sister, and the obligation of loyalty to the community that nurtures and protects us. There is no solution, no remedy for the existential and psychological conflict, no calculus for squaring this circle…
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In the use of a camera, how to accurately describe the photographers active relationship with the object framed by the lens… Is the camera a tool which merely extends observational acuity, allowing more of “reality”, increased information to be accessed? Or is something else taking place? Am I using a machine, the iphone 13 to frame, to select an angle of view to tell my story, to say something about myself, about my purpose to “invite” rabbits into the yard with cob corn?
Am I recording “what happens,” – just the facts? Or am I a world-maker, a participant engaged with everything within the frame of the photograph?
