The assignment:
Photographer Steve Johnson says that ‘Minimalist photography is not simply about taking a photograph of less. Minimalism is about getting to the essence of something.’ So it is not just taking a picture of a black line in a white wall, or of a graphic shape. Minimalism is about removing distractions so that the real subject can be revealed. It means bringing to bear an intellect to see what is there that cannot speak for its self so to speak. (Hmmm that sentence sounds like some double speak).
Being under the weather with a bad cough and sore throat, I have been watching a bunch of YouTube videos. Since the Google algorithm knows I have been looking at a bunch of photography related videos, it popped up this video by YouTuber Ari Jaaksi: “Minimalism in photography:Less is More”. In this post, he states that he is more like a sculpture than a painter, he removes stuff from the scene instead of like a painter adding things to the canvas. If fact many painters drawn to minimalism did just that, they became sculptors (sorry I lost the reference). Ari makes a great point that minimalism is not about graphic art, (the black line on a wall), there must be context to the scene. I think we all have seen load of images that are nothing but a fleeting microsecond. Like a person on the street walking by an open window just as a photographer snaps the shutter framing the person in the window. Yes, I know there is a very famous french photographer that did just that, but those images don’t talk to me. That kind of images leave me cold, because most of the time there is no story, no context to it. That image does not say anything other than the decisive good timing of a shutter button. So yes, I agree with Ari, context is important.
So what to do. How to be sophisticated in a simple way? How do you communicate context in a sparse image? Beats me.
