Surface Tension

The photographic image that always collapses several layers into one: The three dimensions of the world into a two-dimensional plane, the curved plane of the lens, the flat surface of the sensor or the emulsion, the plane of the printed picture treated with the vectors of digital editing. The interaction of these planes is where images gain their story and their strength. The tension: The editing betrays the subject, the lens distorts the world it pretends to represent, the sensor loses resolution or dreams up colored noise, the emulsion is distorted by the development.

To come up with the idea of “truth” in this context is ridiculous.

the illusion of collapse. (the “good” picture makes you unaware of that: it just makes it “as if” you were there.)

these are bad pictures. There was not enough developer in the tank so we got smears and underdeveloped parts. The surface of the film got scratched, the details diluted; and how all this gets boring after a while: how quickly the distortion of “something” becomes just a distortion.

There is also a psychological undercurrent. The surfaces don’t give away what’s underneath; displacement by non-human entities.

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