Art 100 Artist’s Statement »
And here’s the artist’s statement I used in the art show at the end of the semester that got me in so much trouble:
Artist’s Statement
“You mean you want me to say it worse?” - Robert Frost, when asked to explain one of his poems
I’ve been instructed to create an “artist’s statement,” which is a document
attached to the poster board precisely where I’d like to have put another picture,
where I get to talk about myself and my photography narcissistically for about a
page.
Having read artist’s statements from other photographers, the kind that do
this sort of thing for a living, it would seem that I’m supposed to fill the page with
grandiose statements about art, spirituality, and all-encompassing declarations
about the symbolism of the universe and its relation to art. And apparently I’m
supposed to use the word “transcend” quite a bit too.
I’m afraid I’m a little too down-to-earth to care to do that. After all, many of
these images I’ve displayed are landscapes. No one is going to gain oneness with the universe by looking at a photo of some rocks. Therefore, I should state that my idea of a guiding aesthetic is very simple: to capture images that, through some luck of my having been in the right place at the right time to release the shutter and people having been here to look at them, cause someone to smile.
I firmly believe that equipment doesn’t matter at all in the realm of creating
a compelling photograph. Several years ago, a group of people used university
astronomers to find the one exact time in nearly two decades that conditions
would match the conditions when Ansel Adams took his photographs. When
the time was right, they marched off with their GPS devices to the exact place
where Adams stood, print in hand so they could frame their pictures the exact
same way. Sporting cameras that benefitted from 60 years worth of technological improvements to lens sharpness and film dynamic range, several hundred of them converged on that one day. And of course no one managed to create an image that had anywhere near the impact and emotion than those of Ansel Adams.
The camera’s only function is to get out of the way as much as possible of the
job of transferring what I see onto paper. So I walk around, looking at things from
funny angles, thinking to myself “gee ... if I took a picture of this at night, lying
on the ground, it’d probably look pretty neat.”
If I’ve succeeded, and any of these photos have made you smile, or maybe just stop and go “huh,” I’d love for you to let me know. If only so I can take more of those sort.
Enjoy,
Steven Sloss