Topic 1: MIRRORS AND WINDOWS
Topic 1: MIRRORS AND WINDOWS: Reflection
In most recent years, my family has been the main subject of my photos. Images which have been largely curated for a ‘window’ into the past ready for a future moment of reminiscing. Yet the very fact of curation suggests an element of mirror rather than window.
How much do family images means beyond the family?
This clumsy portrait of my boys is my favourite photograph so far this year. It has nothing to do with its aesthetic quality but the fact that it preserves a moment in time which reflects an imaginary world that my children were living in. It isn’t a window into a moment of play. It is their own conscious reflection of their identity in their chosen poses; their desire to look strong, important and fierce. This photo was as much given as it was taken. Their choices were instrumental to its existence. It embodies the nature of photography as a two-way process.
Haberstich1 refers to the “tension between artifice and reality” that is especially present when photographs have been taken in “directorial mode”. It strikes me as I look back on my own family archives that most of these photographs are some how directed. Some are directed by the photographer, placing people for the convenience of the camera and some are directed by the subject who has engaged with the lens in a way which transfers power away from the photographer and towards the subject. Candid images still take direction from the viewer who imposes the meaning.
The above image taken in Lockdown 2020 is a candid image but was composed by the photographer and holds both elements of being taken as well as made. It is also very open to the viewer for interpretation.
As a photographer I would like to align myself more with the ‘window’ than the ‘mirror’ but I am uncertain whether the reciprocal nature of photography ever makes this truly possible. However, there must be processes of capturing images that serve to make the window more dominate than the mirror. Does the photographer’s understanding of a subject make it easier to photograph its essence or does the understanding (which inevitably contains bias) colour the work more?
Sometimes I think photography is a bit like the pickling process. It aims to preserve something (a moment or an idea) for later consumption. But it is unable to retain the exact characteristics of its subject. The flavour, which was always open to interpretation at the time, unquestionably alters through the process of pickling. The quality of the process can safeguard whether the end product still holds value despite its metamorphosis.
I often use photography as a means to understand people; both individually and collectively. I want to understand more about how I can remove myself as a player and sharpen the focus on my subjects.
In particular, I am very interested in how people evolve and the interplay between context and progression. I would like to use photography to make observations of this process to understand it more deeply.
1 Haberstich, D. (2012) ‘Photography changes what we long to see’, in Heiferman, M. (ed.) Photography Changes Everything, Aperture: Smithsonian Institution, pp.34-36
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