When I first discovered that I could take macros with my phone using a macro lens, I zeroed in on flowers. Their petals, and where bees and hummingbirds go to eat. I took many of these at one time, discovering that with this kind of lens, I could even capture a single grain of pollen.
I would say that in my films, my focus is very close. What I seem to aim for, what gives me the most satisfaction, is to alleviate feelings that I cannot, for many reasons, express openly. To me, there are things about being a woman, for that is the only existence I can speak to credibly, that are too primal, to use a word, to verbalize. And sometimes, because women are generally, even today, an unknown quantity in the externalized world that men have created and run for what seems forever, it is almost taboo to try and put these emotions “out there.” And as a reserved person in general, believing that there are some things that you just cannot talk about or explain, that don’t fit into civilized constructions even though natural to us, the only suitable outlet seems to be art, and some kind of prayer, some kind of communication with mystery.
One could go on about this, writing all kinds of theories, making all kinds of justifications. But I do believe that there is merit in believing in the impossibility of explaining everything, and that the world that I live in, at any rate, covers this unexplainable character of people with all kinds of layers of irrelevant stuff to keep it hidden, to keep it in control. So I acknowledge and give respect to this very “real” aspect of myself, but it remains in the place where it is allowed, and also as a result, protected from being discredited.
Perhaps too, in my current obsession with street photography, I’m searching for those inexplicable things in daily life. Recently I’ve found an app which was created to simulate photobooth photos – three to four photos in succession on one strip of film, one print. In a sense, it ends up being a kind of motion picture film, in that it can document a passing of time, albeit with pause inbetween shots, not like long exposure, which can capture a much more detailed account of for example, moving a limb – like hand drawn animation, but obviously you are not drawing the range of motion from one direction to another yourself. I read somewhere that a unique capability of the camera is the fact that it can capture a semblance of time. This I like very much, and yesterday while playing with this app, finally made the connection materially from photography “film” to motion picture film – in other words, via successive frames.
A very relevant and wonderful discovery.
NOTE: For galleries I’ve started for photography in the style directly above, please see here and here.
