Observations
on a Early Photograph
The
first thing I'll do is start writing my thoughts on how I have
done my work up until this point. I started working in photography
some thirty odd years ago. What first comes to mind is actually
a very early black and white photograph, that was taken, developed
and printed when I was around 16. I remember it was a view of
an old shed on the farm, the summer kitchen. It was a close-up
of a window with no glass in it. The frame of the window had
little or no paint on it and the white of the walls had been
washed out long ago. Through the window was a double sink resting
on the bottom sill, tipping downwards out toward the ground.
The sink itself was old, but modern in the sense that it wasn't
thick enamel but steel, so the bottom being black and the top
being white cast a certain shadow onto the window. The faucets
were still on it and were turned every which direction. In the
sink that was outside the window, was a potted plant that drooped
down over the edge going down and out of the picture frame.
At the top of the window and the top of the picture frame was
a piece of ivy coming from inside the shed; like a snake it
wound its way downward towards the sink. This was not, of course,
my first picture ever, but one that I do remember. As I look
back on it now, I guess why I remember it is because of the
randomness of it. The idea of a window with no glass, the idea
of a sink in the window, the idea of a pot in a sink. Those
random placements of these things - my father throwing the sink
on the windowsill because it was in the way, my mother putting
a pot in the sink because it looked like a good place for a
plant, I don't know. I took a picture of it because it was interesting,
although at the time I only guessed it was interesting. It was
only after I saw the picture did I know it was, and then it
is only now that I write about it. I write about it because
I remember it, not the image per se but the randomness of the
image.
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