Some artists take photographs with mysterious secret machines and they then work with skilled print makers to get the best out of the information captured on film. The results are what matters and it is judged according to rules much older than photography itself. There is the washing, the spinning the drying and all that seems to matter to some afterwards is the clarity of the image, the size, the composition and all the other factors that in context of the particular creative world make the work a great one or not so great.
What if showing the secret information, the guts that are hidden inside of the photographic process mattered as much as the end result called the image. What if the process itself the thing that happens behind the washing spinning drying were turned into the actual piece. What if the exposure time, the settings of the machines involved in making the image were not hidden from the viewer, but displayed, part of the work of art. What if the values were so incredibly pushed to the limits, the piece somehow still looking like a photograph, but the actual process such incredible tour de force, a balancing act on a high rope so much so that the photograph becomes almost secondary. It is about the dishwasher, not the sparklingly clean glasses.
Take a look at the following Photograph called Erratum (10/7/2000), by Christopher Williams, on show at David Zwirner in SoHo.
Read the description of the process and be amazed. Or is it just me? Am I seeing things where I should be just seeing a beautiful piece of dish washer design?
At least this is what the press release seems to indicate. Hmm, very fascinating. I like this one.
hmmm. well I personally see some nice red Tupperware ;)
Posted by: shauna on December 9, 2002 04:45 PMin reference to your comment on the above entry, the trick is to always leave comments on your comments. that is how my blog became the commenter's paradise that it is today :)
for example: instead of putting this comment in the above post where it really belongs, I commented down HERE. So now this post looks like it's a happenin' discussion! ;)
Posted by: shauna on December 9, 2002 07:48 PMshauna---do you do the pussy cat blog? that's like happenin' (though, so is this witold.)
Posted by: em!ly on December 9, 2002 08:09 PMOh, I understand. I need to comment on the comments in the right comment section? Commenting just in general confuses everybody. I am beginning to understand. : )
The PussyCat Blog is the epicentre of an entire wild community. Shauna is the ringmaster. I am amazed.
Wow.
I really wanted to talk about the amazing photograph of the dishwasher... but maybe some other time.
We have time.
yes that's me. that bloody pussycat blog.
but i did like the amazing dishwasher picture! i just couldn't think of anything intellectual to say about it *sigh*
Posted by: shauna on December 9, 2002 08:47 PMWell, the picture itself is sort of OK... I probably should have elaborated more on the process, which is indeed quite spectacular. It is a bit as if he made this picture by driving three trucks through a wall or something. He basically closed the lens of the camera almost tight, so the camera could not see the dishwasher. Then he used this super strong light to compensate for it and exposed the picture through three filters with various times. The story continues in this manner. It is quite amazing that the result looks like a photograph. It could have been just a black sheet of paper had he made one miscalculation. All the energy used to shoot this picture. Quite amazing. Oh well...
But maybe I am completely wrong. : )
i wonder how many times he did it before it worked out so well? or did it he have it all worked out in advance how he'd do it? like following a recipe to bake a cake? (i wish it was that simple. i would like a cookbook for photos. mine always flop like a crappy souffle!)
Posted by: shauna on December 9, 2002 08:58 PMWell. Winogrand left more than 2500 rolls of film exposed but undeveloped, 6500 rolls developed but not proofed, and 3000 rolls proofed but not examined. That's a total of a third of a million unedited exposures.
(Quoted from Here, Jean-Luc Mylayne on the the other hand takes about a picture a year. Hmm. I am sure you can take exceptional pictures. Is there a cookbook for photography? Probably as much as there are manuals for driving a car. Will they tell you how to use it? Perhaps. Will they tell you that you will one day drive across Australia with a best friend and find yourself? Probably not. : )