An issue.
Whenever I come across something like my Perfect Little World, here, I feel like I ought to ask the question -- I usually don't, simply feel that I ought -- "Is this art, or is this a cam-whore?"
Photography as art is a difficult idea to completely wrangle down to the ground so that you can study its habits. Is this photograph art, or is it just some putz with a cheap Minolta hoping to capture a memory?
Is the preservation of memory itself, in some way, artistic?
The question I'd ask if I were typing this entry (which I am, you may've noted) is: "Can you tell, just by looking at the photograph, which it is?"
And the answer I'd give if I answered without thinking on it for a while would be, no. But that would mean that the photograph would have to have some kind of explanation of intent, or the viewer would have to already know something about the photographer. And true art should not come with disclaimers and notes of explanation, now should it?
Well, all these questions are making me hungry. So the hell with all that.
I don't consider my photography to be art. It's just a hobby. I like taking pictures. There is some not-quite-explainable pleasure for me in clicking the little button and knowing that the image has the potential to last forever, perhaps on the internet.
The window in my previous post -- it's always been that way, and the very first time I saw it out back behind B-Dubbs, the first night I worked, I wanted to take a picture of it and show it to other people. "Look at this window. Doesn't it look cool?" There's something about that window.
The picture of Greg with blood on his hands and the broken Slappy's Deli sign behind him ... after I took it, I looked at it and thought, heh, that looks cool. The colors are nifty. Et cetera. I wanted to share it.
So the purpose of this "photo blog" is not to stick up a bunch of pictures and say "look at me, i'm deep! i'm an artist!" It's just me pursuing my hobby and sharing those results which I feel are worthy of sharing.
It may or may not turn out to be art. If so, I'll probably be dead by then. So I won't waste my time caring.
