I’m not sure what other people imagine when they think of us, photographers, as a group.
Before the personal computer, the word “geek” would bring to mind an image of someone holding a slide-rule or a test-tube or a camera. The craft is gear-heavy and highly technical. It employs obscure terminology, intricate rituals and relies on a unique system of measurement. The craft is a common refuge for the sort of bright, quiet adolescent who feels a bit threatened by the social demands of the Chess Club.
It’s an image of myself that I’ve never quite shaken: an ungainly kid with tape holding his glasses together, for whom a camera is both a ticket to parts of the world he’d never get to see otherwise and a shield to keep the people he finds there from getting too close. I think that’s true for many of us. But there are other things photographers have in common with one another and with other artists. I wonder if the rest of the world sees beyond the camera.
Maybe this description fits you better: You’re afflicted by some of the same infirmities shared by so many other artists in so many other disciplines. Besides a preoccupation with the visual (of course) you are hypnotized by beauty, fixated on detail. Obsessed with nuance (the falling of a note, the declination of a line, the rounding of a curve into shadow and then to black). It’s just stupid how easily you can find yourself lost in subtle details that others seem not to notice.
It’s a sickness. It’s the sour fruit that we have transformed into fuel for our lemonade stand.
We were geeks before it was cool.
But the digital revolution has produced a powerful mash-up: the geekiness of the photographic arts with the colossal nerditude of computer science. Hours in a darkroom bathed in noxious chemicals have been replaced by hours in front of a calibrated display. Our finger nails are no longer blackened by Dektol. We have carpal tunnel syndrome instead. Progress.
Tags: Photography, Random
As a recovering photographer I can attest to the fact that the passion and appreciation for quality of light and the appreciation of the world that expresses itself as art NEVER leaves you. The desire to make a seemly imperfect visual happenstance, one of simple perfection is an ongoing obsession this recovering photographer willing accepts as his privilege of life.