I’ve been reading David Gibson’s The Street Photographer’s Manual and he really has good advice to give.
Referring to Geoff Dyer’s books The Ongoing Moment (on photography) and But Beautiful (on jazz), Gibson makes the connection between street photography and jazz:
I identify an empathy with the mindset of jazz musicians. They get lost; they have an idea where they are going, they are in control but they are open to chance and what feels right in the moment. That alternative name for street photography could be ‘lost photography’ – street photographers need to get lost. (pg. 8)
That’s my thing with writing poetry as well – you start somewhere … you have an idea of what to do but do not know what will happen or what you’re really going to say until you’ve written it all out.
Writing for me is (improvisatory) thinking that reaches for something that wasn’t there before.
Perhaps the same might be said of jazz and street photography. How else would you reach something fresh/new/innovative if you already know what you’re aiming for right from the beginning?
Have an idea of A; do A; attain A, and you will still get A. That’s not quite satisfactory.
We’re always in search of that breakthrough, that gap which broadens.
Following David Gibson’s advice on looking through layers, I’ve been looking through glass, windows, mesh, etc.
I can’t decide whether the monochrome or colour version is better.
Both are equally valid, I think.
Here.
Here again. There’s a filmic quality to the color.
The photographs here were taken during a family trip to Tai Tong Valley Organic Ecopark.
It’s a study in what we’ve made of animals…
We’ve domesticated many animals.
They are tame, chained and obedient.
Perhaps they’re the external manifestations of ourselves as well.
Perhaps we need to learn to look through animals at ourselves.
We’re all tamed, chained and obedient to one thing/idea or another.
The above is a playground that looks like a roped enclosure … actually, it is a roped enclosure.
You could allegorize and say the human playground is at the same time a roped enclosure of sorts.
We’re all “(m)echanical beetles never quite warm” (Wallace Stevens, “The Man with the Blue Guitar”).
That I suppose, is the seed of cultivation…
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