It has been hard to think of a specific photograph that is important to me. I can easily think of groups or collections of photographs that I definitely feel are important, but it is hard to pick one out of the bunch to talk about. There are family photos, photos of my life, photos I have taken, photos my friends have taken, and photos that have made me think a lot about photography. Some are important to me because of a personal connection to the subject, others because of why they were taken, and still others because I do not have a personal connection. So how do I pick?

It seems like photography begins for most people, myself included, as a personal record of one’s life. Most of my life was well photographed until the age of 10, and then there is a big gap until I get to college. I think its amusing because the years without photos are years I didn’t enjoy so much anyway, so I don’t need another reminder of them. Those years were also years that I didn’t look at photographs from when I was younger. It wasn’t until fairly recently that I have seen the two boxes in the basement of my childhood. Not seeing these photos until now has made the age of 5 seem like it was longer ago than my memory makes me feel.

Most of the photos were taken when I still lived in France and my dad was alive. In my head, this doesn’t seem like so long ago, I can remember how I felt pretty well. When I see these photographs, however, it exemplifies the differences between then and now. The way I look, how outgoing I was, the really great places I grew up in, etc. The photographs exist of me, but in a context that is not attached to my reality of today. Within two years, my dad passed away, I moved to Pittsburgh, and the photos stopped.

What I remember about growing up in Paris is the happiness everyone seemed to have there, and the mystery of the intertwining spaces of the city. Things in Paris seemed happy, huge, and very strange. It was an adult’s world and I didn’t understand it, but it was interesting. Pittsburgh became quite the opposite: people were not so nice and the mystery of the suburbs didn’t match the mystery of the city. I want to know the Paris in my memory more than the real Paris. Whenever I visit, I feel like my perception of my childhood is rewritten with an adult’s point of view. As Paris becomes understandable, its mystery disappears, and so do the perceptions of my memories. Photographs help make Paris a real, concrete, immutable thing. They replace my memories. Seeing the photographs after such a long hiatus was a shocking reminder that my perception of things is more important to me than reality. The more I see these images, the more they replace my memories. I don’t like that.

That’s not so say there are exceptions. I think the photos of my father and I are really important. They document the small amount of time we had together. Unfortunately, these photographs of my dad have almost completely erased any memories of my perceptions of him. Most of the images have become my memory. The only memory I have that isn’t from a photograph is the expression he would have and the way he used to stand. I don’t have many other memories of how he looked or felt. My mother has never had the photos of my dad on display, because she feels like it is sad to have reminders of people who have died, and she would rather remember the good times they had together. I appreciate that she has done that, to the extent that it allows me to attempt to remember him for him, and not for his photographs.

These are personal photographs that are important to me. Photos from my childhood and photos of my dad. They are important because the subject of the image reminds me of an experience I had. Slowly, the photograph replaces my memory. Should my perception of things, or the camera’s perception dictate what I think is real?

More and more, we each see photographs every day of people, places, events, and things that we do not have a personal connection with. The photographs are the only reality we know of these situations. We place our own values and perceptions onto them. But the reality of the photograph and the reality of the situation are not the same.

I’m not sure how I feel about this sequence.

10:37am

10:38am

10:39am

10:40am

10:41am

10:42am

10:43am

10:44am

10:45am

10:46am

10:47am

The camera photographed the space every ten seconds while furniture and garbage were rearranged. It is unclear if all 55 images should be separate, condensed into minutes like these, or shown all in one. None of them read the way I want them to yet.

55 10 second frames

Regardless, this should be a portrait, but I am pretty sure its a spatial documentation. The change in the space documents an individual’s life for a specific amount of time, so it seems like it might be both a portrait and a space.

Being photographed is not something I have thought much about. I have always felt that part of photographing someone is to show who they are, what their present condition is, what is motivating them—generally something that whomever looks at the photograph will be able to understand about them. It seems that often these photographs are inspiring by either the virtue or the disgust they represent. It is hard for me to objectively say what it is about me that is photographable. Should it be something that portrays my positive aspects or my negatives? What should it say about me? How can one photograph tell my story? Am I so full of myself that I think there is way too much to tell in a single photograph?

Portraits don’t often make me feel any particular way. When I look at a portrait, I think more about the fact that I am being told that this person or moment or situation is important and that I should have an emotional reaction to it. But I typically don’t. I think more about what the photograph isn’t saying and is likely omitting to make a concise story. I’m more interested in the process surrounding the creation of the portrait than the actual portrait.

I think the editing of information is what is often interesting. The edit is what makes the new story. Similarly, the medium of film has similar issues when it comes to documentaries and other narrative formats. What isn’t being said? Why not? Should I trust this depiction? I am unsure if it is possible to ever represent something while maintaining the reality of the thing itself.

The portrait, like a documentary, creates its own story, separate from the exact reality of the subject. That’s why it is interesting. I don’t need to trust the depiction by the photograph, I just need to accept it as it own reality. So then, if a photograph of me won’t tell my whole story, or possibly even tell a lie, then I am not sure if it even matters who photographs me. If I am unrelated to the eventual product, then the photographer can do whatever they want with me.

I am not really interested in who photographs me, because they will do whatever they want with my depiction. Should Robert Mapplethorpe investigate my sexuality or fetishes? Sure. Will Nan Goldin be interested in creating portraits of me after an awful experience? I don’t know that they happen often enough. Would John Coplans enjoy documenting someone else’s body? Probably not.

This isn’t to say that I would feel comfortable about being photographed or allowing others to see them, but as a subject I don’t have any control over the way I am represented. A single photo has at times both ruined lives and brought others together, started wars and ended them, created scandals and exonerated the accused. It is often unknown if the reality depicted is the reality they represent, but sooner or later it doesn’t seem to matter. A photographer, like other representational artists, generates their own story. It is not up to the things they photograph to generate it for them.

Ansen Seale, Strive

Slit scan images are produced by creating a thin vertical slit in a panel in front of the film. As the panel is moved horizontally across the film, light is projected onto the unexposed areas of the film. The process of exposing the whole frame cannot happen instantaneously, allowing for movements to occur while the photograph is created.

Unlike long exposures, which continually allow time to pass in their creation, slit scans actually capture many instants that are then arranged next to one another. A linear collection of moments are assembled together, which does not render a specific length of time, but rather describes a speed of time.

Ansen Seale, Temporal Form no. 10

Ansen Seale, Ideal Form

I find Ansen Seale‘s work to be really interesting. The simultaneous views are both fractured and continuous. This challenges standard instantaneous photography by offering a reading from left to right, which obliges a viewer to spend more than instant to view the image. I also think that the use of a canvas to eliminate perspectival cues effectively allows for the body to generate its own space.

Andrew Davidhazy, Slitscan 1

Andrew Davidhazy, Panning Peripheral Portrait of Annie, 1990

Golan Levin keeps an incredibly extensive resource about slit scan photographers here.

Mies Van der Rohe, Barcelona Pavilion Interior Perspective, 1928
©2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

I’ll open the log with this fascinating montage from Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion. The level to which this drawing reveals both Mies’ intention and his investigation of space is a one time clarity of process that I wish I could find for so many other projects.

The radical nature of the drawing is how Mies describes space. He places general elements around the empty plane of the drawing without a ground or ceiling. The ground plane, arguably the basis from where architecture is experienced, is not there. Its absence in a drawing meant to relay an experience of architecture is a clear shift away from the issues painters had experienced in portraying realistic foreshortening of the ground previous to the invention of perspective. In this drawing, the most important plane is the drawing itself – the plane from which space is experienced. By removing the representation of the ground, Mies separates the difference between the experience of a representational drawing, and the experience of the thing itself. What the ground is in architecture, the image plane is in a drawing.

Although I haven’t been there, I’m interested in how the representations of this project, from analytical drawings to photographs, have created its relative importance in architectural history. The pavilion has a history of challenging the documentation of architecture, from Mies’ constant editing and cropping of published photographs, to its resurrection after an almost sixty year absence. Only a small number of documents existed in that time, and are still the only remnants of the actual pavilion constructed in 1929. The original pavilion had its photographs, and now its duplicate has duplicate photographs. The building, unlike most others, has been represented not only through photographs and drawings, but also through architecture. Its duplicate does not exist to serve as anything except to re-present a previous architecture. Much like the duplicate Eiffel Towers around the world, the current pavilion exists as an allusion to another reality. Little did Mies know that the pavilion would not only disrupt the connection of a representation from its subject, but also the reexamine the reality of the subject. Is the current pavilion as fulfilling a representation as photographs of the original pavilion? Is the drawing deeper than the plane we see?