response by kelly latham
When I first watched this in class, I thought that it was odd. I also thought that he was just tired of photographs and wanted to do something different. It wasn’t until after I also read the Szarkowski’s “The Photographer’s Eye” introduction that I understood what Hockney meant when he said, “you are more aware whats at the edges” and when he said that “it was unphotographable” and “photography doesn’t quite show you the way you see it with your eye”.
When he said “you are more aware whats at the edges”, I now understand that he meant that there is no way you can get everything in the frame that needs to be there. And when he deemed something unphotographable, I understood that a photograph would not convey it wholly, or truthfully. And I really not understand what he meant by “photography doesn’t quite show you the way you see it with your eye”. Because it doesn’t! Viewer pick what the want to notice out of a photograph, and overtime that might change, but the way you originally saw something and the way it first impacted you can’t change. You can’t change real memories. So if one paints it instead, that you can focus on what you wanted to, and leave the rest out. You can choose what was important to you and share that with the world instead of sharing what you think is important, along with everything you don’t think is important that can distract from what is really important.
When Hockney was talking about his childhood, then I really understood what he meant by unphotographable. He is combining memories with current, and that is impossible to do with photographs because you cannot photograph the past. You can have photographs of the past, but not photograph the past. Just the present.
No comments:
Post a Comment