Photography is brutal. A photograph is the end result of a vicious performing act.
The vocabulary surrounding a photograph is violent. There are shutters and filters and bellows; aberrations and distortions; solarizers, polarizers, sensitizers; developers, fixers, stoppers; these, in conjunction with those other progeny of the industrial revolution, are used to shoot subjects, to capture them. A darkroom is simply that: a camera obscura. It is at once terrifying and purposeful in its intent. Film & paper, once exposed to the tyranny of that which lies without, may not lie naked again until they have been rehabilitated, until they have recovered to a state deemed meaningful: an object to be consumed. This process of selection is exquisite in its sadism; we now have machines that make light of these macabre methods. The earliest foto is a blink. A blink is a preventative mechanism. One blinks to see better. One blinks to lubricate. A blink is also a pause. The seeds of photography were sown when we first noticed the images formed on the inside of eyelids, at once black and pinkorange, shape-shifting and electric. The sneeze came next. Now we had a sound to emulate: the shutter. The Eye is King. The Mind is his Queen. We now live within that panopoly of apparati the mechanical Eye has birthed: chortles, sniffles, chuckles, giggles; cracks, queefs, farts, wheezes; yawns, moans, grimaces, frissons; burps & belches, whispers & snores. http://cixa.org/ephemerides/mame.php _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
