Thanks for clarifying. Yes, I agree it’s probably always a mish-mash of both .. which makes it hard to articulate well when we discuss this stuff. I had a lot of discussion with an artist here recently on a similar idea, talking about ‘silence’. I mentioned how much i enjoy the silence of the northern winter, and he told me silence doesn’t exist. Simply that there are lot of sounds we can’t hear; i.e., they’re beyond our filter system. He had a bunch of high tech sound recording equipment, and would play me back the sounds going on, almost continually, around us, when all I heard was ‘silence’. Interesting stuff.

Cheers

Carl

I think we are circling around each other here, so if I clarify my statement maybe it will be clearer to you. When I refer to ‘documentary photography’, I’m thinking of the photographers I’ve met who believe a photograph is simply a record of events and thus represents ‘reality’ (and is also therefore factual or ‘true’). They deny that, to make a photograph, a human mind had to interpret and filter sensory data, decide what was in and what was excluded. I think that you agree that this is the case, so it comes down to how we are interpreting the word ‘document’. For many people I’ve met, it doesn’t seem to include an artistic component, and I think these people deceive themselves.

I like the interview, and am also a big fan of Darwin’s work; have been for a long time. And I definitely find value in what this current project they’re working on brings up.

I’m curious though about Sam’s comment “I have no interest in so-called ‘documentary photography’ which I really think is a load of garbage believed by people who don’t understand enough about human perception. When you are trying to interpret the world using media, any media, that ability to interpret is the kernel or seed that leads to artistic expression. I try to be there with my work.”

Isn’t that what all interpretation is, whether it be ‘using media’ or not? Our entire existence is experiential, and all of that is filtered via out systems of interpretation. I don’t understand how documentary photography is a load of garbage at all. In fact, I’d suggest quite the inverse of the statement above; that all artistic expression is somewhat documentary. I hope Sam might clarify this a little.

Thanks,

Cheers

Carl

Cheers,
Tom