Metro Journeys

For some reason many of my pictures this week were from various metro journeys I have had. I thought about why I was so interested in photographing the structures, the people, and the spaces in the metro. Again I think it is a way of documenting or mapping my experience of Paris.

So much of my time here in Paris is spent traveling on the metro. But why is this when Paris is so beautiful to look at? Why do I spend a lot of my time underground and not above appreciating all the shops, streets, and people of Paris? When we are shown in movies and pictures, picturesque moments of Paris the metro is hardly the subject. We are shown what I have described, the city above ground. I think I wanted to show that Paris is more than this, at least to me since I am spending so much time viewing Paris by hopping from point to point on a map, from station to station. Picturing these moments again helps me to realize that Paris is more than pretty; it is a bustling, moving city that is advancing technologically just like the rest of the world.

I am sad that I came upon this discovery, the discovery that I might be able to map my journeys of Paris by photographing various metro stations, so late. Had I discovered it earlier I would have worked on this idea more. It would have been very interesting to take pictures at every stop I went to in Paris. However, I am glad that I have found this week a reoccurring theme in my work. Most of the photos I have taken end up documenting some image of Paris that I feel might be overlooked for the more picturesque features of Paris. But as we have discussed often in class, it becomes boring to photograph only these picturesque monuments and they end up having less meaning since every tourist shop sells dozens of postcards with the Eiffel tower on them. So we have often asked what do we do now with Paris, what should we photograph when beautiful images of Paris have been circulating for so long and are constantly affecting our own work? I have found my project to be challenging this notion that there are certain picturesque images of Paris. My discovery that while this city is romantic it is still a not perfect place with everyday people living here has been a motivating factor for my work. The everyday Paris that I have come to live in has made me question why a thing is beautiful and has made me put a great deal more thought into the photography I produce here.

A subset of ground work

While I was working with images of the ground and pushing the idea of randomness I began to notice that these pictures were often not huge indicators of my presence in Paris. Ground and sky often begins to seem the same in different places, unless of course you have mastered the art of naming a place based on its groundscape or skyscape. I began also to think about why it interested me to take pictures of images that were not so referential to Paris but were evidence of my tracks, or my experience. Then I considered Benjamin’s discussion of the photographer being a type of criminal detective, taking pictures as clues. These were my clues to myself and to others of where I had gone and what I had looked at, even if it wasn’t immediately apparent where I was.

So I thought about other ways I might look at images in order to take them out of context a bit. I liked the idea that only I might know where this photo came from, because it was unique. It might be hard for someone else to find the place I took the picture at and perhaps this might make it more interesting.

I expanded this idea to include reflection. I hadn’t worked with reflection much the first few weeks, but many of my pictures ended up containing reflected images of some type this week. I think in reflections too there is a sense of a misplaced context. Not only are you viewing an image that is not the actual place, but now you are viewing a reflected image, in a photograph. The original object is twice taken out of context and now Susan Sontag’s words about Plato’s allegory of the cave suddenly became a lot clearer as a metaphor for me. What is real is misplaced, taken out of context and we are left only to wonder where we might be, what it might mean. I am interested in these kinds of photos, photos that make you think, photos that might make you view the world a little bit differently. I don’t know how successful my work this week was in doing this but I have tried to push further any concepts that have floated into my mind during the past few weeks.

Paris: Sometimes all I smell is garbage

Another idea I began to push in my work this week was my documentation of the so called “non-pretty” side of Paris, that is, the evidence of actual life with its waste and sometimes unclean look. I wanted to look again at places where garbage or waste might be, but I also wanted to push this idea. So I decided I would not limit my search for the unclean to just garbage, but expand it to allow for the many images and places I have come across that one might not expect of Paris.

As I have said before, I am not a fan of the idea that we should continue to image that Paris is not just a “picture perfect” place. Living in a place should definitely show one this. For me living in Europe, and in a city with such distinction as Paris, I have come to realize, as many do, that Paris is not the place of the Eiffel tower, or Notre Dame. It is a live, moving city with real people living real, non-movie-like lives. When I think of my home Chicago I am not only thinking of the Sears Tower or Navy Pier, so why is it that it takes someone so long to realize the fantasy around Paris that is built up by so many images of the past? Books, movies, and pictures, have all impressed upon our minds that Paris is “the city of love” and that it is beyond beautiful. I wanted to challenge the notions of what Paris really is in my work.

This is all of course not to say that Paris isn’t beautiful or “picturesque.” I love Paris, I love being here, and I still really enjoy seeing things like the Eiffel Tower, but I have also seen normal life here. I have come to love Paris despite seeing graffiti, dog poop, garbage, and other images that might be considered “not picturesque.” I believe that I can truly appreciate this city even more when I am able to look past the pretty Paris as it is supposed to be represented, and see the whole picture. So I have documented what I think people might think of as the uglier side of Paris. But to me these images are beautiful because they are a reminder that I am not falling head over heels for Paris without thinking. I am challenging Paris just as I would challenge Chicago, and this makes me feel even closer to my work and Paris itself. It is only by critiquing notions that we have that we are able to learn more, or else we would all just keep our stubborn ideas. I challenge myself and others to look at Paris in a new light with this weeks work.

Pushing my work

This week I decided to continue working with my idea of photographing the ground and photographing looking up. I liked the idea that I would be mapping my experience of the world in a different viewpoint. In this light I decided to push my idea of mapping my experience. I started to take only pictures of the ground and above but I added another element: Randomness.

In class we started a debate about the qualifications for photography as an art form. People raised points about the interference of the machine being something that might make photographic art less intentional than the art of a painting for example. Basically, the question of whether or not the photographer was an intentional artist came up through this discussion and the accusation that the photographer might not be a completely intentional artist did upset me in many ways.

I believe any kind of art form is always going to be subjected to criticism and manipulation of the original intentions when it is viewed by an audience. But art does have intentions and we have already seen that photography is an art form in our culture. Therefore, photography must too have some kind of intention by the artist, even if that intention or meaning behind the work changes when it is viewed by an audience. To deny that the artist does not have control over their photographic work is like saying I don't have control over my speech, or what I write here in my blog. In addition to choosing what my photographic project or image will be, I can always choose not to show an image as art at all. I think it is time to ask ourselves why we are asking the question about intentionality in photography, not whether or not photographers as artists have as much control in their work. We know that photography is held by our culture as an important art form, and photographers as important artists with intentions and therefore this becomes a question about why we as a culture feel the need to question the validity of photography as an art form. Surely this tell us something socially about ourselves.

I wanted to investigate this idea more. Why is it that one thinks every detail of art should be perfectly planned or else it might not be art? I am an improviser and interestingly enough, the performance art I perform is based on loose rules that rely on randomness to create the art of the improvisation itself. For instance, in a long-form improv show you are working with your fellow performers to create something that is based on random interactions between each other. There is no way for us to know every detail that will have occurred by the end, and that is what makes the end conclusion so beautiful. During the performance and in the ending, the audience is left to read the scenes as the wish, making connections that we as performers completely invite them to do, but in no way would have made those same connections. Yet this comedic performance art is accepted and the same type of randomness in photography is questioned. Why is this?

Of course comedic theater is different than photography, but it too is social as all art forms are. Is it just the safe realm of comedy that allows the randomness of this performance art to be so accepted? Perhaps it is that in our everyday lives there is already so much randomness that people feel art should be grounded in control of some type. But I argue that randomness in photography might be more interesting, as real life happens randomly. There is beauty in randomness to me and I wanted to explore this idea in my photos.

So for a large part of my photographs this week I walked around with my camera pointed either up or down and when I felt the urge to take a picture I pressed the button. I did it when I felt something, when I saw something coming up, even when I heard something interesting. I wanted to surprise myself with the images and I wanted to question the idea that this type of project would somehow be less intentional than my other work. I would argue actually, that I had a lot more intention in this work than that which I started with. I can't come up with as good of reasons as to why I took pictures of graveyards in sepia tones as to why I did this project. I feel this only makes the work stronger.