Tim Carpenter says, in his essay "To Photograph is to Learn How to Die, that intervention of the sort described by Flannery O'Connor as "certain rearrangements of nature" when speaking of achieving greater depths of vision, when working with a camera, can affect what is uniquely photographic. He uses the words "undermine" or even "destroy". I talked last about processing my photographs with the intent of showing what I see versus what is necessarily before me in real time; and how I have come to the conclusion that my digital art is still well within the boundaries of what would be considered digital photographic art. So, I'm a little disheartened by Carpenter's statement which seems to me to limit the sphere of the "photographic" towards a more purest perspective. Don't get me wrong. I have great respect for the purists and would gladly walk among them if/as my technical skill improves--I'm still in the process of learning but, then again, aren't we all.
I am enjoying the book-length essay very much. In fact, I like his work--both photographic and literary--so much I've put him on my top 10 list of favorite photographers because of the combination. But . . . I readily admit that I struggle to find my place among artists in general, and photographers and writers more specifically, and this statement has set me back a bit as my art moves decidedly from digital photography to digital art. Now, to be honest, I am only half-way through it, mostly because I'm giving more than my usual thought to his words but also because I keep going back and re-reading whole sections two, three or even four times; and I leave open the possibility that as I continue on I will gain a better understanding of what he means--he, in fact, states that he will argue the point later--especially when I get to Part III on Photography. I'm holding out that this will be the case.
And I'm holding on to O'Connor's words: "we must give the artist the liberty to make certain rearrangements of nature if these will lead to great depths of vision. The artist [her]self always has to remember that what [s]he is rearranging is nature, and that [s]he has to know it and be able to describe it accurately in order to have the authority to rearrange it at all . . . This is not the kind of distortion that destroys; it is the kind that reveals, or should reveal."
This is a photo of the Église Saint André in Orquevaux taken from the hill on which the château sites, looking eastward over the village. What caught my attention was how the sun was shining down on the south facing wall, and when I desaturated the photo, that is what remained. My time in Orquevaux served to slow me down so I could see, really see, instead of just glancing, clicking the shutter and moving on, and so it is only appropriate that I quote C.S. Lewis here. "We do not truly see light, we only see slower things lit by it, so that for us light is on the edge--the last thing we know before things become to swift for us."
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