The Red Awning by Chipka
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Description
Sometimes, I find myself wandering through what Laruie Anderson might call an abstract trance. I’ll see everyday life from an everyday perspective and not really think much about it at all. Later, however, if I happen to recall an event or a particular moment, whatever it is that I remember will seem somewhat heightened, somewhat shifted. That’s the nature of memory, after all: it’s close to dreaming. What goes into the brain stays there, but takes on a different context, different elements of the whole may come to the forefront of recall, while other elements slide backward and out of easy “sight.”
This is something that I have been interested in exploring. I love photography for its ability to allow such explorations. You can take a photograph, and it will serve as a kind of external memory. It’s crisp and clear, but not really cluttered by stuff like “context” or “mood” in the way that your meat-brain might apply such things. For me that’s both a strength and a drawback to photography as memory. Ah, but postwork can change all of that. It can apply “memory-fuzz” to something crisp and clear; it can shift colors, change night into day (just like cinematographers use day-for-night filters) whenever they’re shooting a scene involving lovers on a beach at night; it can turn a perfectly good picture into an odd painting-like thingie, or even a page out of a comic book…er…I mean, graphic novel. I like those possibilities, and I love the exploration of what is real, what is hyper-real, and what is…well…unreal, and I’m quite intrigued by the process of making a real thing unreal.
I took this picture on the day that Corey and I meandered through the depths of downtown Chicago. We’d stopped to get snacks before meandering further north. We took pictures of high-altitude contrails and called them death rays. We saw the Chicago River, and found out the exact names of buildings we’d both seen for decades but could never really identify…and later, much, much later, we ate pork chops and mashed potatoes with peas.
I can look back at any picture I’d taken that day, and I can enjoy the recall of that day. But pictures, unlike organic memories, don’t shift, degrade, get fuzzy, or totally completely change contextual elements like well-shuffled Tarot cards will change the outcome of a pictorial narrative. They do, but it takes a long time for that to happen. Maybe my photographic interests are an artifact of the fact that I read Tarot cards and use them according to their original intent: to tell a story (or look at a familiar story from a different perspective) or send coded messages to other Tarot readers—though I haven’t done that in a while. It’s a fun thing though, to say something, to communicate a message through Tarot speech to someone who’ll look at a particular layout and particular cards and say, “Yeah, but lets get beer first.”
In doing that, I’ve learned that photographs have a particular Tarot-like quality, and thus a distinct correlation to the way the mind actually sorts through and retrieves memories. When a picture is fuzzed or corrupted in some way, it comes alive in ways that memory lives, and I love the exploration of that: I love playing around, postworking a photograph until it resembles…well…something not exactly photographic. It’s such a fun way to play, and if the play is intense enough, it yields something that can be used in other aspects of life. That’s what I like the most…getting something simply because I played around. For me, that's what life is all about. Playing.
As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting...and Happy Father's day to all the dads of the world.
Comments (21)
Sepiasiren
Happy Father's day to you as well!
flavia49
wonderful!! Happy father's day!!
CoreyBlack
Hey, looks like I'm the first person to comment on this pix. I remember this day very well, I believe it was in mid-March and quite cool out. I love what you've done to it. It looks like a painting now, and as such is nicely removed from the actual situation in a way that makes it a seperate work all together. I like to play with photos as well, but being more old school I prefer to experiment in other mediums like painting, 2D and other forms of mixed media. Coming from a more archival/journalist angle the photo itself, and the image it contains remains weirdly holy to me in its sheer honesty of time and place. I also love the emotions photos conger, especially old ones. I look at the black&white shots I made of Chicago between 1986-1992 and all kinds of things come rushing back: the weather, the amount of work that went into the pix and what I was thinking and feeling when I made it. That, and all the recent shots you and I have made together have been a lot of fun. Anyway, enough babbeling. This is a great shot and I love the way you are able to play with photos and come up with something totally new out of the original source material. Bravo!
jocko500
lovely abstract you find here in the real world.
MrsRatbag
The Red Awning (it does seem to require capitals now) is wonderful...it is unquestionably the focal point of the image, and everything else shreds into insignificance beside that boldly burning emblem. It could be a story on its own! Well done, Chip...
romanceworks
It's true, the best and most profound things come from playing. For when we play, we are in the child and seeing and experiencing things for the first time. This is one very red awning and such a contrast to that little patch of organized nature below it. And the nature of memory is interesting. It always amazes me that my daughter and I have such different memories of the same events. We all live here on Earth, but certainly live in our own worlds. CC
Sea_Dog
Great words and pictures, as usual, Chip. Some folks feel the photography is over once the shutter closes. But your insights here into post work and how it pulls more from the photographer than mere f-stops, or color balance or ISO settings really dispels that.
beachzz
I've had kind of a crazy day, so trying to comment is probably not a good idea. But I have to say that I love this, that blast of red is great, and all the rest works just fine. Your narrative, of course, gives it even MORE Life!!
minos_6
The thing with post work is that we often find we lose something in exchange for whatever is gained, and for me it's always a question of balance and compromise. I love what you did with this picture. The deep gloss shine of the awning is in complete contrast with the wonderful fuzzy-felt feeling of the whole image. This is an excellent result!
durleybeachbum
Hear-hear, Chip! 'Joy in the Making', that's what it's all about! Of course there are many reasons for taking pics, but surely that is one of the most important. (probably doesn't apply to the person who takes those prison shots with the numbers on them, but..you never know.)
marybelgium
wonderful postwork !
lucindawind
fascinating to read and a lovely shot and post work :)
Meisiekind
Wonderful pop of red amidst the drab colored building! Yeah - those days hit us all!!!!
jmb007
bonne photo!!
kgb224
I like what you did with this capture my friend.
helanker
OH Yes, I LUUUV to play with my shots and my paintings too. It is great fun. Excellent reault you got there and I had a cosy time readig you.
sandra46
The big red comma lying down at midair over a deserted hall is fantastic. I also like to try to reproduce not a photocopy of what i've seen, but a copy of the electric hug i got somewhere on the frontal lobes and my spine. The postwork helps me not only to remember that special moment when i feel that, yes, it's the right POV, image, interpretation, but also to remember the remembrance. Something between Coleridge and Wordsworth, visually speaking.
faroutsider
Fuzzy memories of a day I never experienced... but now I have! Excellent shot and postwork.
auntietk
Clicking the shutter is only the beginning! It's SO much fun to play with shots. I love layering filter on filter on filter. Sometimes in such a subtle way you wonder what I've done, sometimes so outrageous you can't tell what the original image was! It's the process, the result, the joy of discovery. This encompasses all that and more ... what a fine image!
praep
Nice image - a great drop of color in this concrete world.
Alex_Antonov
Beautiful work!