Inter-subjective gestures: counter to the objective subjective cause and effect quantitative qualitative idealism realism art theories that place the sublime or the absurd at the centre, a wide angled lens seems to offer an alternative. At first glance the person seems to be evading being photographed when in fact the direction of the lens is the banal white fence. Projection aside we are both engaging in a gesture of intent albeit mine presupposes his,that being the case this project is an ongoing labour as it is based on the ability/non of street photography with all its uncertainties and chance to produce an event in which photographer he/she and inanimate object coincide to produce dialogue on an inter-subjective level.
Now what i want to suggest is that how does one acclimate to this Kinetic process? Something didn't quite happen on the road to Novi Sad ? In returning to it, what I noticed/remembered on that road whilst framing a shot 7 years ago was a man not quite looking over my shoulder but close to it, visualising with no camera what i was framing, like most interesting things that happen to us it stuck. Let's put this Serbian curio on hold a sec. Street photography as a field is generally a discursive strategy, this current Instagram, Flickr environment a diad has been constructed between photographer, photos of people and amusing info billboards. A quick glance on either of these platforms and you will see various dyads, shadow shots with people with bright coloured cloth to offset the shadow, of course this is not just common to this time, long before these platforms there was the ubiquitous sunset shot.
what is being stated is that there is a preservation of memory in relation to traditional images and technical images. As a self taught photographer a considerable amount of time was spent pondering what constitutes a good photo in the early days not willing to look at platforms or photographers work possibly led to this notion that photography could be a generator rather than preserver the serbian curio was one generative moment regardless what he was thinking.
Flusser states ‘ Art is any human activity that aims at producing improbable situations, and it is the more artful (artistic) the less probable the situation is that it produces’( Flusser 2002 p52). He then goes on to state a very Blakean vision of art, (hateful and ugly). Anyone who has ventured the field of street photography knows that the improbable shot by chance is going to make your day if not your career and i'm fully aware that in the above quote it is more about something we can't quite comprehend, but the point is the apparatus allows us to frame while being framed, attention is needed. The probability of coming across these events pictured is chance enough, hence the time taken for three shots (to date) shows. Now the dialogic aspect to these shots is in the intent I'm not solely framing them in the shot, they are not the object, there is no specific object, objectivity doesn't relate so to speak, if it exists at all ? What is going on is an engaged physical movement via the lens that produces stories. Benjamin's word of mouth comes to mind albeit inverted, the fact that the object does not exist specifically allows stories to be played with. It is dialogic.
A certain curiosity is needed a naivety so to speak, we seem to know so much ( lost in meaning ) but know very little ( what goes on inside )in terms of the apparatus that is the order of things. The good thing is there are many ways to skin the cat ( play against the apparatus ). If we are to remember rather than keep forgetting that it is us that create images/stories to navigate the world then attention is needed. It seems zeros and ones can equate to four dimensions to two dimensional surfaces and back/forward to four dimensions which interact in an entirely non-didactic relationship where the subject-object dance does not exist in the same manner, if at all, as the photo does not exist at the time of the engagement in fact the photograph is an effect of the process, i could have just postured and wrote about it, but where is the fun in that. It is the gesture and the blackbox that create said engagement.
