Artist Statement
The medium that I chose for this
assignment/experiment was photography. Photography has been around for over a
hundred years, and I set out to capture the essence of what photography was. In
order to begin, I had to boil down to the brass-tacks what made photography
photography, and the answer that I came up with was light. Light is the most
basic element of photography, for without it, the camera (and by extension, us)
would not see anything. There would be nothing to sculpt, nothing to expose,
and nothing to admire about a photograph.
In terms of the function of taking a photograph, one
of the things that sets photography apart is that when you take a photo, it
freezes a specific moment in time, never to be repeated again, but captured in
the form of a photograph.
In the “Understanding Comics” article written by
Scott McCloud, he walks the reader through what makes a comic a comic. He uses
the phrase “sequential art,” meaning that when taken as part of a sequence, the
art of the image is “transformed into something more…” With photography, there
can likewise be a sequence of images generated, with each image capturing a
specific moment in time.
Wynn Bullock, one of the masters of early 20th
century photography, explored light using photographs. Among his famous “ColorLight Abstractions,” we can clearly see an experimentation process that shows
the essence of what photography is and can do. Of his abstract photographs,
Bullock has said, “I love the medium of photography, for with its unique
realism, it gives me the power to go beyond conventional ways of seeing and
understanding and say - This is real, too.”
Bullock discovered a side to life that many people
don’t see, and that is the moment in time that gets captured by a photograph.
In my experimenting process, I photographed the filament of a light bulb, first
with the power off, and then with the power on. I used a 100mm macro lens, and
I got as close to the bulb as I could before the camera couldn’t focus anymore.
I personally really like the photos of the bulb when it is lit. While we all
have seen a lit up light bulb before, I feel that I have captured something
that is not seen every day. We usually turn away quickly after looking at a
light bulb for a second (if that). What the camera provides is the ability to
get in close to the bulb and freeze the moment in time while the power is passing
through the filament, thus lighting the bulb.
I feel that I have captured, in a way, the essence
of photography, in that without any light, we wouldn’t be able to make any
photographs at all.
These photos are really cool Steven
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