a sea of steps

Frederick H. Evans - A Sea of Steps

imitation is the highest form of flattery

The Pond—Moonrise, 1904

Edward Steichen

So what I’m talking about here i think is the photographers desire to be original but that we are taught to study other work and be able to reference it and to have a knowledge of the various movements within the institution of photography/art.. But why? If I think about it we get this huge body of work which we are always ripping off and passing off as our own.. If photography is the tool of modernity and the new, why then are we still homaging images over one hundred years old.. is art just a copy of a copy of a copy etc... I don't think its necessarily bad that we look back and become influenced by the stuff that precedes us, but the knowledge of that stuff (stuff here I mean photographs hereby referred to as stuff) works against the idea of learning and exploring the world photographically.. I always feel the need looking at stuff in galleries, that I want to be able to say 'yeah that like so and so' or 'that reminds me of your man' not ' cool thats funny'.

So what then? Is the blind photographer (http://blog.blindphotographers.org) better then the institutionalised photographer? Probably not because hey they can't really see shit... better than me no doubt... but looking at Steichen and his lot (pictorialists) they were doing something that they were drawn towards.. Romantic notions though they were... I can't get away from the idea that photographers should be cut loose from the dogma of the image and instead reflect what they see everyday.. What else can photography do? Its not going to influence people (apart from buying shit that is) is it?

People are going to read imagery from the perspective of the whole package of images they carry with them, we don't see something without wanting to put in a place alongside other things we feel it belongs with.. We do this with out even having to think about it.. But isn't it great when we actually see some thing that actually pricks us and makes us smile because we simply don't know where to put it...

little green men

images of the north have always been so cliched, the union jack flying on a street lamp or the curbstones painted outside a housing estate...so i guess one more image of a ragged flag on a street lamp can do no more damage...

we all (by 'all' i mean who ever has) can claim responsibility to either reproducing the imagery of the north in either cheaply replicating it in our own work or by buying into the imagery it provides, such as borderlands, innocent landscape, the troubles photo montage (sean hillen).
people speak about the diverse imagery of the northern troubles, but what about it? as photographers the imagery of the north is too good to ignore, colourful (red,white,blue,green,orange and white again), le quotidien du spectacle (unless of course you live there with it every day).

but what i am interested in, is that the imagery of the troubles has become tired and has been in the years past source material for many irish photographers.. but now that we have the men in green back on the television again, i wonder whether if these bodies of work were intended ever to heal the wounds of the north or merely use them to their own gain.. has any image added any positive value to our notion of the north, or have we merely perpetuated the imagery of the north to meet our our needs...

/diagonal/\compositions\

downandoutindublin