The Resonant Image: Echoes of Light
We look at the world through two eyes but see it as if from one inner eye in the center of our heads. We see depth, solidness, color, highlight and shadow, and, as a result, we see form. Our visual sense generates the appearance of the surfaces of these forms from changes in light. To paraphrase Matisse, we do not see things, we see the differences between things. We create what we see, and we can be fooled.
When we close one eye we still see the world as if from that single inner eye, but the sensations of depth and solidness disappear leaving highlights and shadows and colors. We can only infer depth and solidness from what remains.
When we close one eye and look at the world through the viewfinder of a camera with the other, we are at yet another step removed from what is “real.” At any instant we see one of an infinite number of ways of framing the scene in front of us. When we open the shutter on the camera it captures a fraction of time and space by bending light in precise ways onto a light-sensitive medium that freezes a representation of "what is out there." Whether this representation is composed of silver, pigments, dyes, or bits, there is a multitude of reasons why it is not the same as what the inner eye created at the time. Neither does it possess the same highlights and shadows and colors as what created it--it never can.
When we open the camera to create a new, two-dimensional representation of what we saw at the time we opened the shutter we come to a number of questions: What did we really see that caused us to act? Why did we choose that particular moment and that limited segment of space? Were we acting on intuition or a preconceived purpose? Did the camera capture what we wanted? Is the image intended to be descriptive, explanatory, aesthetic, judgmental, self-referential, or some combination of these attributes? And finally, which of the infinite number of ways at our disposal do we use to display this image to other inner eyes in a way that conveys to them what we created at the time?
Much as been written in response to these and related questions. A lot of it is contradictory and pure intellectual invention. All of it is more removed from the experience of an image than is the image from what created it in the first place.
As for myself I will simply say this: I act intuitively with the purpose of finding patterns of highlights, shadows, and colors that resonate with my inner eye. I find my images when and where I find them. At those relatively rare times when I have taken a photograph that I ultimately judge to be “good,” the camera has rendered an image that continues to generate that resonance. It is as if a chord had been struck at the moment the image was created and that chord continues to echo through the multiple stages of seeing.
To produce the printed image my intent is to assure that the echo does not fade. Sometimes that means just leaving what the camera captured pretty much alone--the subject matter was interesting, the scene composed itself, the light was perfect, and the camera did its job well. At others it means changing the highlights, shadows, and colors to create, not what my inner eye created from the real, four-dimensional world at the time, but what my inner eye resonates with in the two-dimensional world.
Each of the images I select for my portfolios continues to resonate strongly for me or they would not have been selected. I hope they do the same for you.