Borderline Obsessive Illusionist

      I'm obsessed by Art   

                                           –Nikos Pantazis

 

So am I to a point. I love Art, as the ultimate symbol of Imagination, of escapism and of creative thinking. Of experience, of feelings and profound beauty. I love how it does not discriminate aesthetics, it is everything and nothing, whatever you want it to be.  I love the way it consumes and  often becomes the very first and last thought of the day. Tickles, seduces, suffocates and releases.  It makes me think of Aristotle's theories of catharsis and hedone, the purging and release of emotions through the experience of art (which also applies to the act of creation for the artist).

 

We shall not cease from exploration,

 and the end of all our exploring

will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

                            -T. S. Eliot

 

These days I find myself consumed with figuring out concepts of embodiment and the portrayal of the body in photography for an essay in the Art history subject The Body In Art and Thought: Deep Genealogies.

 How does staged photographic representation of the body convey ideas of identity/persona, sexuality and relationship to photographer/viewer?

 I find myself lost in the jungle of semiotics and I keep coming back to the conclusion that everything is borderland these days. Are we certain of anything in regards to what we see? Do we even know if the emotional response to an image is ours and not orchestrated by the artist?  Is it ever just one or the other?

 Do things exist the way we 'see' them or are we simply encoded to see them in certain ways?

 I came across the website Photoshop Disasters, or it's a blog really, and nerd that I am, found it most amusing. These advertisements are out there. You've probably seen one or more of them, but you, as I, have most likely not really noticed what was actually there. Our brains have become so accustomed to certain things that it is only by reflecting upon them, or having some things pointed out, they reveal another layer of 'truth'.  Advertising and Cinema being the prime examples, the Queen Bees of deceitful illusion.

Take a look at http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

Enjoy. 

Picking Minds When It Gets Scary

(artist statement from review 2)

         Down The Rabbit Hole 

 

The visible world is no longer a reality and the unseen world no longer a dream.

  – W.B. Yeats [1]

 

 I follow the rabbit into the dark. I go to a place that holds my deepest fears and desires. The theatre of the mind, where visual experience is created in a symphony of electrical impulses and chemical reactions, and everything is as real as it is imaginary. Suspended in this borderland of reality and fantasy, I create my dreamscapes. Ephemeral tales that can only continue to exist through photographs.

 Photography no longer only belongs in a world of reality. 'While analogue photography alludes to "having-been-there" digital photography questions if there ever was a "there" at all.'[2]  As such it is a portal to the imagination, to a place that knows no boundaries of logic and reason, where everything is as real as we want it to be.

 I cannot imagine a world without fantasy, a world with no escape and no need to believe in the fantastical and beautifully weird. I choose to indulge in the seduction of dreams and endless possibilities.

 

 Are you such a dreamer?

 

 ...thoughts on a work in progress...                                              

                                                                                  - Dida 

                

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[1] EWING, W.A (2006) Face The New Photographic Portrait, Thames and Hudson, New York, p. 214

[2] CHESS, S. (2003) Cyborg Children in Digital-Land, the Works of Simen Johan p.3

All Those Beautiful Shades of Grey

First drafts of the new images from a shoot I did on Friday. Still more editing to do, but it's all coming together. A few weeks before final review this semester and so far I feel as if I'm in a pretty good place (amongst my usual strange and scary) with it all.

It was another cold one, but slightly overcast and a good night for it. Again, a big Thank You to my lovely and amazingly patient models. Together we had a very productive and magical night spent traveling in the borderland of reality and fiction. And these are some of the initial results. 

I'm trying to bring out other characters besides just the bunnies, but as of now they are still the entry-point, or the guide into that other place. A couple of 'dragons' are in the making and things are still on the move. Final due date still not till late October or somewhere thereabouts. 

For final review this semester I'm gonna have one or two resolved images printed and, hopefully, a deeper clarity around them. Next steps will be to do the final editing and selection, and determine what size they need to be and start proofing and testing. 

I want to print on the large Epson 9800 so a decision about paper also needs to be made. So far I have done small tests on the Ilford Galerie Gold Fibre Silk  and that seems  to be working alright without struggling too much with color balance and luminosity. But my hope is that before I start final printing we will have gotten more Crane Silver Rag. 

I haven't tested more than four different papers so far, but I can see how one would become a slight paper-nerd. :) 

Still much more to do and strange places to go. 

Until next time...