Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Reality the way you want to have it


Tinted, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Eolake pointed out the art of Diane Varner. (I commented on this at Eolake's blog.)

I had never heard of her. Her technical skills are indeed impressive, but somehow the result is a bit like Disney art - polished, manufactured, shipped to millions.

Indeed I feel that there is a way for the meaning to disappear because of too much polishing.

The world is, after all, imperfect.

I also see a kind of theater in the photos. There are photographers who go to even greater extremes in post-processing, and some also approach photography as a kind of performance/theater art, using costumers, fancy cars, etc. as the building blocks.

This is reality the way you want to have it.

The photo here was taken yesterday. I feel it is somehow similar to the Diane Varner photos, although I did not do any post-processing to the camera jpeg. But at least it is not perfect.

3 comments:

Paul said...

I've seen Diane's work and really like her version of reality. I don't desire to post process so much, but I would like to know how to do it. :-)

Each photo, untouched or not, is our version of reality. There is no way around it. Reality is very subjective. There is no objective reality, IMHO.

Juha Haataja said...

You can say that everything is subjective, a kind of relativistic position. But I would argue that not all realities are equally valid and that some are in fact quite disturbed and invalid.

I kind of like Diane's work, but still, there is too much application of that kind of sugar coating these days. With her treatment even global warming, pollution, hunger and thirst may look tempting.

Paul said...

What can I say, Juha, I'm a relativistic guy! :-) I don't know if Diane has advanced quite that far as to make those things appealing in the least, but your point is well taken.