The relationship between photography, moving image and painting
January 19, 2011 4 Comments
Today I have been reading about the relationship between photography and painting from Painting Today, ed Tony Godfrey, Phaidon Press Ltd 2009. Chapter 4 Photographic. I am interested in what painting and photography is, how they relate and what they can do. In an earlier blog I discussed the idea of not only making work out of ourselves but the work making us. The idea that an engagement in painting makes me whole again ( following ideas and feelings of loss and mourning) through restoring an inner peace , this leading to ideas and feelings of being one with the world again. Photography and video assists me in capturing moments or glimpses of time and experience. Not necessarily to represent the reality of the moment or experience but to capture that which is unexpected or previously overlooked. The small nuances in nature which upset our perception of the world as we might know it. When photographing I am looking for the unexpected, mysterious, vulnerable or incomplete, the fleeting moment which is ambiguous. Photos can take me back in memory but also project me forward to imagine a future. I am using photography and moving image to improvise on what is seen through exploring a vulnerable beauty. I am looking for the pathos in the experience of nature, that which excites tender emotions or is meditative. For me painting, photography and video are interchangeable – I am searching for the imperceptible transition between them. The ability to segue from one to the other without pause. I use photography and moving image to capture sensations. They give me distance from nature and allow me to improvise freely from it fluctuating between abstraction and representation.