Some point

What's the point of taking a photograph if when it's taken you wish it wasn't.  Prudence stepped in between the moment something caught your eye and the camera met it.   You shoot it anyway.   It is so frustrating because you have the image and it looks good and then you have to grapple some more with P.   The winner?  In my case, sometimes P.   Although there's rarely a need for me to regret an image because they are mostly unregrettable.  Rocks are hardly going to complain.  And anything else is often out of focus - a bit like my eyesight.

Occasionally it's not and in the process of taking a photograph, capturing a fragment of a moment, a likeness, a portion of a person, my head goes into overdrive and... are we commenting on something about them, or asking others to?  Are we pausing them in whatever activity they are doing for a closer inspection?  With or without their permission we are not just pointing at them, we are recording whatever it was that made us point, and it is that which I am grappling with.

I wonder what self-talk artists/photographers go through to inwardly feel content in what they are preserving and publishing?    Look at the ever-raging discourse on Mapplethorpe's broad range of portraits and content.  Or Diane Arbus, did she struggle with her subject matter?  What about Philip-Lorca di Corcia with his surveillance-like tactics?  How did Robert Frank feel about it all?  Larry Clark? How does Martin Parr?  While I might be torn about what is the 'right' answer, it's a good job photographers through the ages haven't let themselves, or public opinion, censor their images because we'd be a whole lot poorer visually.  Perhaps it's a construct of the time we are living in - where torturous thought ends up leading to a succession of safe but bland imagery.

If the human condition is one of vulnerability and it affects us all - does that mean we don't photograph anything to do with it?  Or should we photograph all of it?  Is there a rule somewhere that tells us what about our vulnerability is ok to photograph and what isn't?  I never studied Ethics but there's a thing in my brain which nags away.  Does it come from so much consideration of the patriarchal gaze while at art school?  Have we got over that yet?  Moved on?

One time I worked with a group at a MIND centre - I gave them the cameras and they produced the best bunch of portraits I've seen in a long time, including one of me - my ass.   I could do with a bit of their attitude.

So with that in mind

Going back to finding myself

I once received a Facebook invite from Lucinda Wells which I found thoroughly creepy so never pursued.  Now, typically, my interest in the mystery of all those people with the same name has been piqued and I wish I had followed it up.   This is not an invitation to anyone out there to begin a new project but if you do just remember I thought of it first (although there is nothing new under the sun, as my Mum often says).

What I didn't mention in the previous name blog was so disconcerting that it needed some consideration before posting.   I've been trying and failing to remember the name of the artist who made work about doppelgangers, was it Diane Arbus,  Christian Boltanski, Thomas Ruff, Francesca Woodman, Wendy McMurdo ...?   While looking for myself I stumbled upon an image of a woman with the same name - now it's true the mirror is a terrible liar and our perception of how we look is very different from how others see us.  We even seem to have fixed in our brains ourselves at an earlier age, so do we ever see ourselves as how we actually look today?  I have no idea (except that the mirror always flips us - isn't that a weird notion).  Often we are shocked when presented with a current photograph of ourselves, partly because we have been flipped twice in the process (another in my list of 'to do' projects) and partly because it's not how we think we look.  Bearing all that in mind as far as I am concerned this picture of another woman looks very like me, same name, lookalike, crikey she's even got the same hairdo.

See what you think.