For most of my photography career, I just kind of accepted that because I saw the world in color, and that was the way it had to be. The world was in color, and to be faithful to the notions of the world, the resulting art had to be in color just as well.
There was once a time where “I didn’t edit my work,” in quotations because that’s a bullshit notion to begin with. I thought I was a purist, that I had captured reality exactly as it was, exactly as I saw it, because I held up the camera (editing my work), framing my composition (editing my work), pushing the button with a shutter speed selected (editing my work), and then doing nothing to the resulting picture after the fact (making a decision not to edit my work, because John Cage’s 4’33" is also music).
And eventually, I realized that light itself is subjective. The entire idea of light is one hundred percent bullshit. Light exists, sure, but it is absolutely goddamn nothing without a sensor of some sort, and that sensor is what lends the objectivity: eyes, lenses, chromatophores, chlorophyll, panels. And these sensors are entirely subjective in their make and their expectations they provide for the one viewing through them.
And if light and sensors are subjective, then so is editing.
All of photography hinges on a seed that is put into a camera: whatever we happen to shoot. After that initial starting seed, what we make of our run is the choices we establish and the decisions we make from then on out to make our art.
This entire diatribe to say, yes, I’m working on coming to terms with monochrome photography cause photography itself is bullshit and I wanna make pretty things, thinky things, wonderful things, and I am not any sort of archivist.
Thanks for seeing my work, and reading my essay!
