Whose will determines the content of an image?
“Whose Will” is the tentative title for my current bird series. The setting is supposed to be an obviously contrived stage — the fixed stone table, the impossibly parallel overhead vine, the tipped-over sky behind. The birds shown are supposed to look like they are acting for an audience, as an improv group of actors does. (Alternate names for the project are “On Stage” or “Bird Improv”.)
A composite image is an obvious imposition of ones will on the scene created. However, in this particular series, the birds are supposed to (appear to) be imposing their will on the scene created (by staging their interaction) — though, naturally, it is the imposition of my will (in making the composite) that makes them appear to be imposing their will.
But these composites start from — use — photographic “pieces”. The birds, as originally photographed, were willing their own actions (eating bird seed). So at root at least that much of the content of the picture belongs to the will of the birds. On the other hand, I chose, by my own will, the particular content (posture, configuration, expression) in the original (non-composite) bird photographs. The bird offers me the choice but it is I that make that choice. Offer/make are yin yang, seed and egg.
I doubt most photographers think too much about this. Non-composite photography may seem to be a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. The flexing comes from the photographer’s end (what he does with himself and his equipment; the light that he waits for), not by the stuff “out there” re-conforming according to his will.
As a compositor, however, I obsess about the restrictions on my choices — on my will. I can play with the relationships, the interactions, the system, the space between. But the pieces themselves are fixed. They resist me. They insist, they require that their own will be respected.
The birds, sky, stone, vine are the words; I make them into sentences. I use the words; I don’t make them. I use them to make sentences — which sentences are my own (my will, my meaning).
I think this is true of all photography. Even those who despise manipulated images are “making” their own sentences every time they make a coherent photograph. The words are out there, but the sentences are not; they have to be made by someones will.
-Julie
