Photography has become so fundamental to the way we see that 'photography' and 'seeing' are becoming more and more synonymous. The ubiquity of photography is, perhaps ironically, a challenge to curators, practitioners, and critics.
Interpretation
Photography influences our perception of the world, making it an integral part of how we observe reality.
This quote by Trevor Paglen highlights the profound impact of photography on our understanding and interpretation of the world around us. As photography becomes increasingly prevalent in society, it challenges those involved in the art and critique of photography to navigate its pervasive influence on human perception. The irony lies in the fact that while photography enriches our visual experiences, it also complicates the ways in which we curate and assess artistic expressions.
In practice
In a gallery discussion about the influence of digital media on art, this quote can emphasize the relationship between photography and perception.
The Internet was supposed to be the greatest tool of global communications and means of sharing knowledge in human history. And it is. But it has also become the most effective instrument of mass surveillance and potentially one of the greatest instruments of totalitarianism in the history of the world.
What would the infrastructure of the Internet look like if mass surveillance wasn't its business model?
People like to say that my work is about making the invisible visible, but that's a misunderstanding. It's about showing what invisibility looks like.
Perhaps 'photography' has become so all-pervasive that it no longer makes sense to think about it as a discreet practice or field of inquiry. In other words, perhaps 'photography,' as a meaningful cultural trope, is over.
What a lumbering poor vehicle prose is for the conveying of a great thought! ... Prose wanders around with a lantern & laboriously schedules & verifies the details & particulars of a valley & its frame of crags & peaks, then Poetry comes, & lays bare the whole landscape with a single splendid flash.
As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality.
Anything can become a musical sound. The wind on telegraph wires is a great sound; get it into your machine and play it and it becomes interesting.
We hated Bauhaus. It was a bad time in architecture. They just didn’t have any talent. All they had were rules. Even for knives and forks they created rules. Picasso would never have accepted rules. The house is like a machine? No! The mechanical is ugly. The rule is the worst thing. You just want to break it.
Obsession is beautiful. It's what makes art.
Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.
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