Pixiq

"You are what you shoot." Sounds good. At least intriguing. But what does it mean?

You go out into the street (or the countryside) or wherever you take pictures, and the world is just chock-full of objects. Things. Nouns. Not only nouns but adjectives. Movement. Stuff happens.

When we're born, we recognize objects, movements as unidentifed entities. A face plays peekaboo. Suddenly it's there. Now it's gone. We don't know where it went. Then it appears again—magically.

We are taught to give these things names. And at some point, we are exposed to new sorts of things called ideas. Representations of things that seem to exist in the actual world.

Some people become shoemakers and spend most of the day cutting leather and tapping nails into shoes. In their spare time they support their family. They go to the movies. They discover love, if they're lucky. 

I'm sure there are all sorts of theories about the psychological phases we go through, but the point is that a lot of how we think is based on the things that interest us. And the things that interest us are partly genetic and partly, well ... something else. I'm not sure, for example, why I decided to study philosophy when I started college. When people used to ask I'd say, "because the lines to sign up for philosophy classes were the shortest."

Partly a joke. Partly true. I absolutely hate waiting in lines. But from an early age, say about 12 years old, I showed an interest in creative things, like music. It wasn't that I wanted to listen to music, but what was exciting was to create what to me was a new melody.

My path through college was a wild one. Yes, I began as a philosophy student, and was sitting in a seminar with the better philosophy students when it struck me that philosophy was like putting up a building—a building that would always have a flaw in it. That the next builder would find the flaw and tear the entire edifice down.

And I changed majors to music. My problem was that at that time, and maybe even now, the guitar (which was what I played well) wasn't considered a "real" instrument.  They wanted me to concentrate on the piano or some other instrument. I thought that was wrong-headed and took up writing.

For years, I kept journals like this one. I had decided to become a playwright. I read as many plays as there was time for. I found authors that I especially liked.  And I rode around on the bus, with a small pad, trying to write down what people said—and the way they said it.

Okay. Enough. The point is that I was always looking for something until I found photography. And so you walk out of the house and visit the world which is, as I said before, filled with stuff and actions, and you take pictures. Taking a picture means that you have to fill the frame with something that interests you and say no to everything else.

Well, how to make this decision? I have many interests, based on what I've done, read, thought in the past. I am interested in images that have a narrative (I love stories). I am interested in pictures that evoke music.

When I began photographing, I would think of an image as a musical piece, and like a simple popular song, there would have to be two themes. The "A" theme, which is the main theme, would be the first thing you'd see. You might look at the image many times and only see the "A" theme.

But if it were possible to have a minor "B" theme as well, that was satisfying. The "B" theme was the thing that you discovered after viewing the image many times.

But I was also fascinated by buildings—especially buildings that were falling down. Did this go back to my feelings about philosophy? Maybe. But photography is in the business of preserving things. And in my life, the places I had lived had all deteriorated, disappeared. Was this a way of holding on to things that were going to disappear?

I always had a spiritual side. Not as in the major organized religions, but I had a sense that there was something beyond the physical world. How can that be represented in a picture? Shadows. Nothing but shadows. Keep up with the blog through the years and you'll find a fascination with shadows that just never goes away. The shadow, the metaphysical journey to the other side. I don't know what the "other side" is or if it exists, but I have spent many days trying to find a way of expressing it. (See image of shadow with bouquet above).

In other words, you may think that you are taking a picture of "the thing" or "the moment," but really you are taking a picture of what interests you, and that means that you are taking a self-portrait. Every time you decide to fill the frame with particular nouns or adjectives (moments)—you are telling the world something about yourself. Where you've been. What you've read. How you've developed.

All those books that fascinated you are helping make better pictures. The symphonies or the rock music helps you choose what to put in the frame. Your life and what you've done with it affects what you include and exclude from the image. And so—to some extent—you are what you shoot.