“Image directories. One image holds the centre of the next image. This image gives away its centre as it knows its own centre will have space on the image that comes after…”
To opt-in and opt-out: on image conference and directories
Question: How many times can you cut and how many times can you paste? And which tools do you use to defy the appropriation of an image, bypass its content and connotations – how much does it become about ‘cut’ and then ‘paste’.
I think we cut and paste from conversations we have.
Mild chats to full blown heightened infused arguments – afterwards and during reflection, we tend to cut and paste elements. Try a conversation you have with your camera. You have a direct dictation of the image’s content in terms of the still-life in front of you, and your conversation is to have this still-life recorded using the correct lighting, the right sort of angle – I suppose this can be widened to a conversation (or a conference) between the camera and the tripod and then you, the eye’s and the fingers that press the shutter release.
The conversation is then exposed. And there is a direct, then, cutting and pasting that happens in your mind as you say, “I will photograph this with a 5:7 ratio, but I will edit it square not rectangular… so I can cut this bit out, and this bit and the next bit using this next bit as the centre of the image. The centre of the conversation… the centre of the conference.”
You then stand up right, hands placed carefully on hips, and you stare back at the still-life in front of you questioning its content: you decide to take another two or three shots, one or two maybe with flash, using the camera as your conversing tool.
But what then of the post-production process. What then of ‘non-wet’ photography and its apparent freedom and its actuality in ratios and measurability? A quick change from one size to another, attributing printing quality and deriving web capability. One colour mode to the next colour mode and then back.
So you finally have two images that you are both happy with, both the camera and yourself that is. But in terms of the installed composition – you want to excerpt more of a collaged framing. So… you take one tool and place it in one hand… and you take another tool (something with a straight edge) and place it in the other hand: the camera sits there and watches, just as always, documenting your approach and your changing and shifting of an image.
You take one tool to the image: cut.
You take the next tool to the image: cut again. You take the other image, which matches the prior-image in size and ratio exactly, and on this image you paste from the other.
You then do the same to second image, opting-in to a mirrored affect. Following the same movements You take on tool to the image: cut. You take the next tool to the image: cut again.
You then end up with two image that speak to one another. Or two images that have the affect of you, and your camera, staring in to a mirror… asking a question of the reflected inspection.
