Comments on: Meaning, Subtlety, Repetition

By: doonster

doonster — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 19:18:19 +0000

I get the same issues with photography vis-a-vis developing a view of the meaning and the unconscious versus conscious decision to imbue meaning.

This might be related to the things that make me tick as an engineer. I deal with the invisible: implied notions of flow and change from limited measurements. I think this is why I like the subtle and the multi-tychs, where one has to work with small clues to get to the deeper message. Not everyone is able to think in this abstracted, implied manner.

By: Sources of Meaning « Musings on Photography

Sources of Meaning « Musings on Photography — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:38:59 +0000

[...] 22, 2008 In the comments on this post, Seth Glassman writes “I have photographs where the more I look at them, the more meaning I find [...]

By: Juha Haataja

Juha Haataja — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 07:54:44 +0000

As a kind of opposing viewpoint, I feel that there is a type of photographer who has a preconceived notion of the pictures they want to take, and they view the world as a theater stage, and use lighting, elaborate costumes, make-up etc. to produce pictures which create a reality of their liking. But I guess there must be some kind of discovery there also.

By: Seth Glassman

Seth Glassman — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 22:40:09 +0000

“I have photographs where the more I look at them, the more meaning I find in them. The latter, though, are filled with meaning that I (the photographer) didn’t put there.”

A good photographer feels the image has meaning on some unconscious level – why else would you be impelled to take the picture? Of course you put the meaning there, you were just thinking about the process while actually taking the picture. Much, if not most, art happens in places other than the conscious. Learning how to get the conscious to relinquish control and get out of the way is fundamentally what the acquisition of technique is about.