“It is an outdoor experience expressed in an indoor place which uses the conventions of that place to keep its meaning clear. It is appropriate to that space as it would be inappropriate to hang a framed photograph from a tree in a wood.”
The above is a quote from the book Hand to Earth: Andy Goldsworthy. It is a fairly mundane statement about the photographs he makes of his often ephemeral natural sculptures.
But the quote is bugging me. Think of it in terms of war photography or nudes or wilderness landscapes. Imagine the actual (not the photograph of) war or the (live) nude or the (entire) mountains in the gallery — or the framed photo of war hanging in the bordello, or the photo of the nude hanging in the war … What is this “appropriate” space and what has it done to the content of the image?
I’m in a hurry this morning, so I’m probably just fuddled. You think about it.
-Julie
