Thank you to Andrew McCloskey from the Whiteloupe Photography Blog who asked me to write something for their From the Photographer series. Keep up the good work Guys.
Posted By The WhiteLoupe photography Blog
About a month and a half ago I posted a feature on Teo Ormond-Skeaping and his project In the Fulcrum of Our Dreams (original post). Since then I've had a correspondence with Teo who, after some necessary time for brewing his thoughts, has blessed us with words that make my head churn with ideas and conceptions until I'm scratching. In this edition of "From the Photographer" Teo shares with us his thoughts on what a photograph is and what it can do and what it means to capture experiences. Read through the break, all of you now. Then go check out Teo's website to see the rest off the project along with some of his other work.
All I wish is that I could explain, but I know I would doubt it the moment I did. But what I experience, what I take from not being able explain has become far more important.
I have come to believe that photography may be considered a collection of experiences. That conscious or unconscious, the collection is an acknowledgement of an interaction or process that is considered by the artist to be of a certain value at a certain time.
If that were so we could consider that an experience, and therefore an image, may be valued higher because it is “New” to the individual; assuming there is a base level of experiences that have been collected so often that they no longer hold any value.
This base of experiences would conceivably grow with the pursuit of the valuable “New” experience, the process both condemning the world of available experiences and perpetuating its confrontation. And though it is not possible to have confronted a finite number of experiences the “New” experience would become increasingly rare, as experiences are grouped upon discovery by their similarity’s to avoid the repetitive confrontation of similar occurrences.
We could consider that the highest level of experience would be the metaphysical. This would be an experience that cannot be defined, that in some way an occurrence momentarily represented a semi-conscious understanding of a connected series of preceding and subsequent events that had defined an experience, which the conscious mind cannot retain.
What residual is left by this inexplicable experience is an appreciation of that which cannot be defined and an ability to acknowledge within the work of others the allusion of the same experience.
Seemingly this appreciation of the unknown may add value to the world of experiences where it had been exhausted, yet at the same time it has demoted all but the highest level of experience to the base level. With no determinable reason for the pervious metaphysical experience every action new or old would be considered both right and wrong, both pointless and important.
Actions may begin to contradict as we try to induce such experiences. We may find ourselves cutting down a tree when previously one had fallen in its old age in front of us. We have then become the thing that we wished to oppose.
Creation then becomes the study of almost attaining. The suggestion and acknowledgment of narratives that are inconclusive, horizons, receding roads and all that lies out side of peripheral vision necessitate the continuing confrontation of realty.
The road or the un-crossable horizon then becomes emblematic of both a lack of understanding and a persistence to acquire knowledge, if we consider that experience is equivalent to knowledge.
As the conditions of collection change, photography its self becomes part of the base of experiences, though its method of collection remains fundamentally important it is superseded by the ability to represent time and three dimensional forms.
Collecting and editing moving images enable the combination of experience and the dictation of duration, recording the prerequisite and the void that a valued experience inters within an individual. Where the installation is a facsimile of reality, evoking memories of designated experiences that are intended to demonstrate the value of what was New and significant to the artist.
Time may be the only factor that can revive experiences, yet time itself may be considered as an experience. Valued numerically and perceived at fluctuating speeds, it potentially can be relied upon as a catalyst of confrontations, though its perception signifies its irreversible passing.
For example by remaining in one location within even the most remote landscape say a desert, eventually there would be an occurrence, maybe a snake would move past nearby, or a single cloud over head would momentarily obscure the sun. Yet imagine that after one week of remaining still in a dark cave nothing has occurred, the smallest sound of a drop of water would be given the greatest significance even though just a week before it had been part of the base of experiences.
We may also consider that the definition of a system that rationalises our actions is equivalent to the absurdity of collecting experiences, that once defined it is instantly disproved and doubted. The structure becomes part of a collection of failed explanations, replaced by the next potential system each time dependant on the confrontation and the perception of experiences.
This state of disbelief is invaluable; it is a romantic appreciation of how we failed to explain, where we would never create if we believed that nothing could be explained.
Teo Ormond-Skeaping
The WhiteLoupe photography Blog
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