please dont tell me how the story ends
By Rhio9 (Rhio Hirsch)
16 Aug 2009
(we stood in the front room. arms around we other. we cried. cried hard. my face pressed into her neck. we didnt know why were sobbing. it was just that life was so sad. life was so miserable. all we could do was cry and be sorry about it.)
when i was in school i'd read a paragraph in english lit and repeat it back in my own words. i'd have to say what it was about. i'd have to know what the subject was. there was always a point. i'd find it and get a grade. if i wrote an essay it would have to be about something. having to write about something, with a subject, was a handicap that crippled me for years.
the rule that writing (or music) had to have a subject followed me like a bad shadow. eventually it effected my relationship to photography. every photo had to be of something. each photo had to have a subject. it had to be about something. it couldnt be nothing. it had to focus on something. most of the time it even had to be in focus! (LOL!) photography (like music) was all about composition, perspective, focus, point of view, technique, film vs digital, melody, rhythm, keys, tones, motion, notes, tempo, time signatures, tonality, sharpness and on and on and on.
those are arguably valid considerations for somebody, but considerations in a box nonetheless. i realized that if i wanted to photograph outside the box, or play music outside traditional limitations and preconceptions, i had to invent other ways of thinking about what i was seeing and hearing. i had to find yin and yang when and where they appeared to be missing. my motto was (and still is): take the photo now; worry about the subject later.
i created a new rule for myself borrowed from another rule i made up about jazz: "when there're no right or wrong notes to play, every note is the right note." i modified this and applied it to photography: "when there is no subject to the photo, the absence of a subject IS the subject."
when things are obviously missing, there's a space available for creating them. there's an invitation. the subject of the photos included in this essay is the blur. It's the graniness. The color. The lonliness. The emptiness. It's the absence of composition or perspective. The absence of professionalism. It's the lack of sharpness. The missing point of view. The lack of technique.... preoccupied with motion and sickness of heart. consideration of experience is the subject. in these photos, it's not what's in the viewfinder that informs the subject. it's the way in which the missing information (if it's missing) is the subject. that's how i got the title. how the story ends is what's missing. dont tell me what's missing. find it yourself.
7 responses
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dp * gave props (16 Aug 2009):
There is no escaping a subject. Making it interesting is another thing. Yeah! It's RAD. dp
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jen bellefleur gave props (16 Aug 2009):
thank you rhio. i have never been able to articulate why my pictures of nothing are something. thank you. xo
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Jim Hart gave props (16 Aug 2009):
maybe my favorite essay of yours, and that's saying something
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Simon Kossoff said (17 Aug 2009):
great essay, loved it..
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Simon Kossoff said (17 Aug 2009):
I am awake now so I can say a little more.. Great, I loved this and I am with you totally. photography is still so young and it is NOT painting, which is where these rules and regulations originally came from, I think. Music is a great parallel to make.. thanks for writing this.
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Olivier Scher gave props (17 Aug 2009):
Excellent essay and work about the sense of things.
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Jim Pope said (17 Aug 2009):
Ok, I agree, sort of. I think you're talking formal subject, planned, and scripted and thought out well in advance (or previsualization). But the rules of composition seem to still apply, even when followed instinctively, to make a successful image. Sometimes that means breaking of the rules for a purpose, but that only really means the absence of the rule like the absence of the subject.
So in the end, isn't being absent the same as being present? Oh Crap you've done it again, made me think...
