“Wall divides photographers into two camps, hunters and farmers, the former tracking down and capturing images, the latter cultivating them over time.”
(Charlotte Cotton – the photograph as contemporary art)
In my practice I am both hunter and a farmer. I shoot street imagery, looking for ‘real’ un manipulated ‘real’ moments. Equally i’ll also hunt out interesting scenes and locations then wait for something to happen. Then I am also very concerned with creating tablaeu landscape images which are entirely farmed being the compilation of image elements gathered often from completely different continents.
This image taken in New York is completely spontaneous, I had no knowledge this man would be there, I didnt even know it was going to rain, so this image is absolutely from the hunter. However I shot several frames, this is my favourite, it feels a little staged, theres a sense on the uncanny, the frame prior is this one, the guy now looks to be more in conversation, less of a bystander to unknown events.
This next image was captured in Miami, its a mixture of the hunted and farmed as I had already seen the Lifeguard station, I knew i wanted to include it in a composition. The light was wrong at that point though so I returned the next day and also happened upon the metal detector guy. I observed he was headed down the beach heading North so so I waited until I could juxtapose him with the hut, his red shirt complimenting the red stripes and cones, this the scene is both curated (farmed) and hunted to my mind.
This final image is wholly farmed, the image elements were shot specifically and everything was composited in post production. The mountains from Ludlow California, the gate I spotted in Javier, Valencia. I knew as soon as I saw the gates that they would work with the mountains. In this instance and for all of this project the results will be farmed but again an element of hunting will be needed as I search for elements to composite.
Shouldn’t a photograph be a document of things the photographer found in the world? Not according to Wall “What an artist could do with photography wasn’t bounded by the documentary impulse — but that other part was underdeveloped,” “Painting could be topographical realism or it could be angels — in the same medium. Why couldn’t photography do the same?”
References
Lubow A The Luminist Magazine 2007
Cotton C The photograph as contemporary art