| |
|
|
I call my digital compositions Artegraphs.
They are a creative fusion of artistic vision
and photographs. They bring together the old monochromatic world of black-and-white
and the new world of unlimited color. The method I use to accomplish this transformation
comprises what I know, what I believe and what I imagine. K-B-I. The KBI method was
itself transformed into a scientific theory of seeing and knowing. Theory emerged from
an artifact-based practice. Denzin and Lincoln write that "Artifact-oriented
studies can
play an important role in alerting scholars and lay audiences to information and materials
they may otherwise know little about." While I have used various types of black-and white
photographs in my work, the particular artifact I engage with the most is the real photo
postcard, or RPPC. More specifically I am focused on the genre of postcards called
street scenes. The abundance of material culture, the built environment and social
ideology that street scenes store in visual format is exceptional. They are rich repositories
of cultural information for the information seeker willing to engage with them, be they amateur
or professional. My art and my research highlights the need to preserve and explore them.
RPPCs represent the phenomenology of a new domain
of knowledge. While the taking
of a photograph is an intentional act, calling into question the motives of the photographer,
Luc Sante reminds us that unlike a bow and arrow aimed at a target, "a camera by
its nature ensures that some kind of target will always be hit, if not necessarily the intended
target nor in the intended way." A certain level of randomness is therefore associated with all photographs.
Photographs are like visual archives, embodying in their chemical substrates
what I call Visual Social Memories. When they are brought to life in living color the past
seems less distant, and more real. I do this work because I enjoy it. It keeps me sane
and grounded, and connected. Writing is no doubt a powerful tool for conveying
knowledge. But photographs, because they are visual, can say so much more in less
time, because vision operates at the speed of light. In that sense, I hope that my art is
enlightening and uplifting.
Sante wrote that photographs offer a view
of life somehow unfinished, a type of Still
Life.
I enjoy being about to reimagine those moments from fifty, sixty, and seventy or more
years ago as if they were only yesterday:
Vintage - Like You've Never Seen It!
|
