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Actually, what is Photography?

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It has been a very long time that this question has been asked. SO I will do it again.

What is photography?
I know I have been making photographs and practicing photography of one sort or another for a long time and I am mystified by exactly what it is that I am doing. I know one can deconstruct and unpack and break the idea of making photographs and practicing photography into small bite sized tidbits...
It is the act of using a camera ( or not ) to transfer something onto a sheet of paper or film. That something can be what is infront of the camera using a lens to transfer its reflected light onto something that will eventually remember it through a variety of chemical activities. that image can then be transferred ( or not ) onto something else...
But photography is much more than that ..
 
'Drawing with light' pretty much covers it with me. It is a very lovely broad blanket. The hows and whys one draws with light are endless.
 
In "Photographers" my recent post about Shimon Attie demonstrates that projection onto an object must also be considered "photography."

 
What is photography? A capitalist lie to relieve you of your money.
 
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hi Ko.Fe
but what about the photographs that were made and don't exist? they were also made with photography.
 
I won’t offer this as a definition, but was thinking that recorded music started to be accessible with the invention of the phonograph. Before that there was music. Photographs started to be accessible with the relevant inventions just a relative few years before the phonograph. Before that there was art.
 
Photography is the gathering of specific portions of the electromagnetic spectrum onto or through a surface, or sequence of surfaces, allowing a stable representation of an intended final product originally seen only by the photographers minds eye.
 
jtk said:
Fair enough. But doesn't lack of existence more suggest the ring of a bell?
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not sure, i saw polar express and can hear the sound without the clapper, and i've seen trees fall in the woods via video camera when there was no one there and they made a sound ...

took this 2 weekends ago, its the shoreline of an island i go to often,
it is low tide and you can see the pilings from the docks that were destroyed in the 38 & 54 hurricanes
the seagrass seems to go on forever.
 
 
The question that interests me is what is my photography? The answer is compiling books from years of borderline compulsive behaviour with a camera. It's basically a curating/editing job, or making sense of a mountain of apparently loose ends. Photography as puzzle.
 
i see what you mean, but i am speaking more on a philosophical/esoteric level the essence of what a photograph is, can it be something that only exists as a memory and a flawed memory at best ? can't tell you how many photographs i have made that don't exist because of impossible fixation or because i had no film or paper or anything light sensitive in the camera. i also have things i took in various places that will never be developed and just stay as invisible latent images, are they photographs ? or does a photograph have to be tangible and seeable?
 
I have no idea, which is a great blessing for an obsessive. It means the compulsion is not hindered by self reflection.
 

That seems to me to be the most interesting post.

Life itself is a puzzle if we stop to reflect.
 
jtk said:
That seems to me to be the most interesting post.

Life itself is a puzzle if we stop to reflect.
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Only writers and artist get a mental block about what they're doing. You never hear of plumbers block or dentist's block. I unblock the visual tropes of the culture.
 
I like the question "What is my photography?" I see my photography as the ability to see light and capture "normal" things in an interesting way.
 
jnantz said:
hi Ko.Fe
but what about the photographs that were made and don't exist? they were also made with photography.
Click to expand...
The word "photography" is said to mean "writing with light", therefore, to me, memories do not qualify. Those are not "photographs" but rather "memories". Important but not the same.......Regards!
 
blockend said:
You never hear of plumbers block or dentist's block.
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No, but I've seen data that indicates that dentists have the highest suicide rate of any profession (in Canada). Give me photographer's block any time!
 
 
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