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Media Is The Masses: Beyond The Photographic Edge

By Sean Stubblefield

Content is defined by context-both in the viewed and the viewing.

In photography, for a photographer as artist, there is always a consideration of art and artifice. (what) Does a picture reveal and/ or conceal? What doesn't the picture tell us?

A picture doesn't show what it does not show. Photos are always, in some degree, disconnected from the real world. A frame out of frame, out of sequence-- a slice of pie.

It is like focusing on a particular puzzle piece, removed from the big picture. A world within a world… and yet, outside our world. An altered and alternate reality, a photograph is a slight of hand prestidigitation. What you see is not exactly what is there.

Beyond whatever biased interpretations we imbue pictures with.
A kind of mask, disguising/distracting from whatever is happening off camera. As well as on camera. In posing for a photograph, we don a mask; we pretend for a moment, we are not quite ourselves… becoming surreal representations of ourselves. In framing a photo-before and after the shot-we are manufacturing and manipulating reality. Photos are windows into worlds that don't really or fully exist.

In our attempts to capture truths, we ironically and consequently catch lies. Lies that tell truths and truths telling lies. What isn't said may be as pertinent as what is said-- even more so. To some extent, every photo is an illusion; primarily in the sense that a photo is not the things being photographed. Not only photos, but any visual media representation.

Photography is either about replicating the existing world, or creating a new one.

The photographic edge separates the "real world" from the photographed world.

What if, in our attempt to capture something meaningful, we miss it somewhere else, just outside the frame? A photographer is a part of a photo, existing invisibly in the fourth wall of a scene. The existence, the presence, of the photographer is always implied.

A camera is also an extension of the photographer, just as much as subject is an extension. A photo can tell you as much about the subject of a picture as the photographer… assuming you know and understand their context.

By proxy, the viewer is also a disembodied extra in the scene, just behind the photographer, or metaphysically possessing the body of the photographer and seeing vicariously.

We perceive so much of our world in boxes: TV, movies, computers, books, photos.

In seeking to bring us closer to the subject, photography simultaneously takes us away from it. As a photographer, I choose to be an artist, not a tourist.

I do not want to live my experience as a series of potential frames. You miss the experience of an experience if you are preoccupied with striving to photograph it.

Viewing one's world through a camera lens is a distortion of reality in a too narrowing of focus- limiting both in terms of what we can see and what we aim to see.

Send Comments to: exastra@hotmail.com

Currently based in Houston Texas, Sean Stubblefield graduated Sam Houston State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Television Production. A philosopher poet, Stubblefield has been writing non-fiction for 15 years, and has penned eight books to date. His first book, Paradox: A Journey Inside Out is available today.

For More Information: www.myspace.com/exastral or contact Judyth Piazza at judythpiazza@newsblaze.com.