Photography

As an engine to document the everyday, the photograph, is unrivaled. Photography, while still remaining fully intentional, can, potentially, be a less contrived process of expression than writing. Constraints imposed by the semantics of language on stylization, construction and grammar are more stringent. Visual composition is arbitrary. Although, photography does demand more agency. And precision. To have a photograph of a moment, one must make the picture at that very instant. When writing, one is able to recall an approximation of that moment from memory and process the same into language. This, arguably, makes photography more difficult.

My introduction to photography was with the colour works of Saul Liter, William Eggleston and Joel Meyerowitz. After that, I started following the works of Alec Soth, Robin Friend, Todd Hido, James Mollison, Thomas Struth and Chloe Dewe Mathews. These were different from the brilliant singular frames of Liter and Eggleston. In the documentaries of Dewe Mathews or the typologies of Mollison and Struth, one finds meticulous conceptualization. Alec Soth's Sleeping by The Mississippi and Robin Friend's Bastard Countryside are works that have been realised through a slower, more contemplative process. Work created over several years. I have written about these two books previously here. In all of the above, there is an emphasis on sequence. The individual image is made more meaningful when viewed as part of a series. An unfolding exposition.

My own creative process is not spontaneous; it relies on structure; it is elaborate. And possibly boring. Changing the medium of creative expression cannot alter the intrinsic process of making. As a result, the pace of my own photography has been sedate.

In an interview with the Tate, Martin Parr says that a part of the process of being a photographer is that it's a form of therapy where one can almost experience the extremes of love and hate in their relationship with the subject they are photographing. This was in context of him having spent forty years photographing the British. The longest connection that I have with a place is with the city of Calcutta. As for photographing here, in Amarillo, I would like, in some capacity, to be able to create a visual documentary of the city. And consequently, through continued exploration of the medium, also photograph the chance aesthetic encountered in the ordinary everyday.