A Photograph Captures a Fact?
I’m not a scientist. But I do remember many years ago a visit to a museum exhibit that premised the theory global warming is both a response to human intervention and the natural tectonic hundreds-of-thousands-of-years-in-the-making where weather patterns and slight distortions in space and time shift patterns of temperature backwards and forwards.
Once temperament environments (like Medellin, Colombia, that is said to have eternal spring) now feel noticeable changes in Fahrenheit. This city of 4 million suddenly needs conditioned air for the worst days, these days brought on by car and manufacturing pollution and Nature Herself deciding it’s time to take one long hot steamy bath.
These days I am getting back to total immersion in my creative life. This accomplished in fits and starts as I try my best to break free of my negative attitude fueled by the impossible flash political point in the United States, and elsewhere in the world; some of this petrol of opinion inflamed by migrant crises where people are being forced to leave arid conditions (that lead to conflict) in their countries for the inevitable trek up to northern climes.
Within my grasp right now—a coffee cup, a little outdoor perch 14 stories up—I circumnavigate myself back to me. Coffee house jam music on my Mini HomePod leaks through the open patio door to be met by cacophony of traffic sounds, cars and a metro snaking through battered jungle trees whose heights are now dwarfed by man’s penthouse aspirations. Later I will shower and close my eyes in the tiny bathroom and imagine I’m being immersed in an Amazonian waterfall. Then dress and head for Starbucks to computer create.
Just a brief hundred fifty years ago Native Americans shied away from Caucasians holding up boxes which captured images on glass. The natives were convinced when they saw their image develop a piece of their soul had left them.
This is the trick and challenge of photography. And I also think this is the gravitas of differences of opinion, opinion that is part of fact and belief. How do we respect notions of faith and also embrace advances in ingenuity that take up natural resources to give us levels of comfort?
How does a green plant and an air conditioner coexist? How does a photographic portrait tell and transmit a story and also does not leave the subject with less in their soul?
In a perfect world we would put down our swords first. We would come together for discourse, thus enlightenment. We would respect Mother Nature and decide she lays down her Bountiful not to plunder but to nurture.
Photography right now is going through a transformation. AI technology is solving problems. I want a field of flowers, I type in, and voila! I am given infinite choices.
But can that really ever replace the day I walked and saw and touched and smelled and had to make cognitive decisions on how to capture, and then, in the act of governance to leave behind but still take with me, the flower?
