Indecisive Moment Response

One of the most interesting aspects of the Indecisive Moments artist panel talk was the idea of photographs as objects themselves. Up until now, I had always thought of photographs as windows to a different reality, not as a reality in itself. When I look at photography, I always want to know more about what was being photographed and how it was done and never just take it as it is. When I saw some of the photographs in the gallery, specifically those of Anastasia Samoylova, the first thing I thought was wishing I could’ve seen the real set up in person. I never thought about the photograph itself being the “real thing.” In the panel talk, it was interesting to hear about how her setups just end up falling apart at the end and then she’s done with it. She also talked about how she has had people that want her to create displays to show instead of just photographs. Part of me would really like to see the display in person, but the other part now realizes that we should sometimes just take photographs as objects themselves, not just a window to what the artists wants to show. Another artist that this subject came up with was Jill Greenburg. For her photographs, she takes multiple pictures of a drying painting with many different types of light. She then further manipulates them digitally. She spoke about how people often want to know what she does with her paintings when she’s done, and how surprised they were to find out that she throws them away. This just highlights how difficult it is for us as people to just accept photographs for what they are, not what they are showing. I’m glad I attended this panel talk because it really brought up some ideas about photography that I had never thought of.