Aw man, I love you guys.
Harpper said:
I don't know if this is any use to you but your style has a surreal quality to it which I really like. Basically an ordinary scene made unordinary in a very artistic and pleasing way.
That makes me smile big-time, because that's exactly what I want it to be.
I tell people that I want to photograph the way Neil Gaiman writes. I don't know if anyone is familiar with him or Tim Powers, but they both can turn an average modern-day setting into something magical, but with an edge. I want my work to be something nice to look at to grab the eye, but if it's studied, I'd like there to be a slight sense of unease to it also, the surreal.
My view on reality is that there is no such thing, only interpretations of perception. That's what I would like to show in my work.
There are several peoples' work who I enjoy because it challenges my comfort level and my perceptions. It tends to be rather edgy. Because it's so overt, there are a lot of people that just won't look at it; it bothers them too much. While I would like to emulate that challenge to comfortable thought, I want to be a bit more sneaky about it so that I can have a chance of it actually "getting inside". If I can make my work pleasing to look at, then people will stop to study it. It's then that I hope that they will notice that it's not exactly what it first appears to be. Even if it's not on a conscious level, if they get a sense of the pull between the dark and the light, I'm happy.
To use that first image as an example, it's a photo of a cute boy playing football. The strap falling of his shoulder just adds to the cuteness. This is something that will grab the attention of someone who wouldn't go near
Joel-Peter Witkin's work. (His stuff gives
me the willies, so I can't expect the average person to want to look at that kind of stuff. Fair warning.) There are a few things here that give it an underlying edge, though. The shallow DOF isolates him from his surroundings. There is a sense that he is alone, at least in terms of other human presences. The blurred background has a ghostly look to it. The light is coming from very low in the sky. It could be morning, but with him out playing football, it's probably evening and into twilight. Dusk is imminent, which will be quickly followed by night. It's not safe for such a young boy to be out alone after dark.
What's even better is the ambiguity of his pose and expression. The football is giving you the clue that he is playing, but if you remove it, the look on his face, especially the combo of his wide eyes and open mouth, and the sense of dynamic motion could easily indicate that he's running from something. Logic jumps in and tells us that it's probably his dad or his brother trying to tackle him, but the other, darker, clues hint at something else. Something that lives in the environment of ghostly twilight.
And there's no one around to help him.
I like this image so much for the same reasons:
There's that same sense of play vs. danger.
Basically, on the conscious level a viewer will see an everyday scene and will be able to understand what's going on based on the "data" presented (boy, football, etc). The subconscious will ignore those same facts and pick up only on the clues that set the mood (DOF, lighting, etc). I want these two levels to sort of fight it out. If the first is too strong, the image becomes simply pretty and nothing more; if the second becomes too strong, the image becomes too challenging and people won't look at it. If there is some sort of give-and-take between the two, then perhaps the image will stir something up in the viewer that they don't understand and will have to examine. It doesn't have to be earth-shattering.
Things are still falling into place in my head and I have a long way to go to get my results to the level I want, but just writing the above few paragraphs has helped me understand what I'm trying to do even further. It's kind of hard to express just how excited I feel about all this. (Which is probably why I'm going on about it.) It's like I've been in this room trying to figure the way out that isn't going back the way I came, when suddenly all these doors go flying open. And instead of having to figure out which is the right path, I know that they all lead where I want to go; they just have different ways of getting there. It's mind-blowing.
