lanyways

[lanyways]

‘i take photos because i want to immortalise’

(film still from nawapol thamrongrattanarit’s 36)

was just thinking about photography again (I think about it quite often). I remember a chunky silver digital camera that my grandmother gave me for my eighth birthday - that was the first camera of any kind that I called my own, and I remember my first photos as being of many torsos. from a child’s perspective I guess the heads of grown-ups were often too high up. 

the excuse I had to get my first DSLR was art class, but really it was more because I wanted to take beautiful photographs of my idols. and I did! these photos were trophies, proving that I had been in the same space as these people who i admired and that i had gotten close enough. but these days I don’t get starstruck anymore, I don’t take as many photos and I sometimes forget that I've stood within five metres of Cate Blanchett or that I've listened to Uma Thurman speak about Kill Bill in the middle of a firefly-filled forest. but see, eventually I still remember anyway.

there’s a dialogue in nawapol thamrongrattanarit’s 36 that I'm pretty sure will stay with me for quite a while. it’s in a scene where, seeing a bird in the sky, the art director (he) asks the location scout (she) to look but she snaps a photograph instead. 

he says something along the lines of, “you missed it, now its gone forever”

she says, “well I have immortalised it in a photograph”

he replies, “but you didn’t see it with your own eyes”

!!!!!!!! 

although I guess if a moment isn’t so fleeting i can have my cake and eat it, like right now: I just went into my kitchen to take a photo of the sunset glow out of the window because its rare that the light looks this way. funnily enough, my phone couldn’t reproduce the colour so I had to recreate it in post. lame la.

but I think when we make our most earnest photos, we are trying to create a feeling. the most recent time I felt this way was in May, near the end of the school semester: the thought occurred to me that when my exchange-student friends went back, and when my final-year friends graduated, even if we all meet again it would be in different situations and we will have become different people by then. I initially titled this entry “I take photos because I want to remember”, but I'd like to think that within the photos that I took, there is a place where that moment lasts forever. these photos aren’t spectacular or glorious but they hold the details that matter to me! in fact I think I’m now often consciously trying to stay away from the objectively beautiful (or cool, or whatever), because I think that there its too easy to lose myself and what matters.

what is dissatisfying to me now: I don’t like most of my DSLR photos I've taken since December last year. I get the sense that I was trying to capture a kind of “exotic”...!!! while romanticism isn’t inherently dangerous (its more of how that information is used, I think) I am wondering if it is possible to create a work that doesn’t romanticise? especially if we (i) create art and photos from an idealistic perspective? what makes a photograph enduring?

[lanyways]

art and self-expression

when I try or think about talking about art it often feels pretentious, which is ironic because I love listening to people talk about what art means to them and why they are drawn to doing it

i don’t have a favourite artist. ok maybe Marc Chagall....

i think what bugs me most about art is how loosely the term “success” applies to works, and as an extension to that how loosely “art” is defined. art is subjective, it can choose to make a statement or nah, etc etc. is art what its maker - the artist - claims is art? does this question even make sense? 

i hesitate to call myself an artist because I don’t know what it would mean for myself to take on that identity. but I can tell you why I make and capture things the way I do. my primary objective is to preserve - a state of my mind, a moment in time of my experiences. it has to be personal because I think there is no point in trying to make anything if its something anyone else could do too. if its personal it will be yours, the more fiercely personal the more inimitable. 

maybe that’s why I love Marc Chagall’s paintings. its an instinctive kind of love I can’t explain it. 

but anyway i find it difficult to be vulnerable in my expressions. often I halt when i think “this is too lame”, and end up going with something that I can tell myself in my head “ye this is cool”. I guess its a natural instinct to want to be cool, to build up a persona that I can comfortably associate with myself. I think authenticity is difficult to question and verify though, it’s a rabbit hole I'm not sure I can deal with properly now

I have been trying to approach self-expression from a different angle, from emotions. right now im at a point where I feel more fulfilled and more comfortable consuming forms of self-expression than creating my own. mainly film these days, some photography, some art. i feel most disengaged from art, even though from an academic standpoint it is always exciting to me. I think photography is one of the most challenging mediums and I can name the four photographers whose works i know I like and admire: Josef Koudelka, Martin Parr, Ren Hang and Sebastião Salgado.

film is this whole other thing altogether though. a medium that (when used by an auteur) I think can give the closest approximation to the workings of its maker’s mind. which is another irony isn’t it because when we watch a film we often respond to it with our own experiences and we like films when we feel that they are about ourselves. same goes for art I guess and everything else in life because we are self-centred creatures. but 

I think

a good film can never just come from its technical craft. this “good” is instinctive I can’t really explain it but its a feeling of my mind being simultaneously quiet and abuzz. the exhilaration of an experience, of a life intensely lived and loved.

I have been grappling with modes of representation, I don’t know what and how to present the thoughts that have been in my head these few months. I think a lot has been shifting around in my head, thoughts on how I perceive myself and how I want others to perceive me (and when this matters or does not), my relationship with art and film, Orientalism, words. where will I go from here? I am still unsure of my relationship with art and film: whether I can create or curate (or neither), what exactly it is that keeps drawing me back to these mediums. I’ve been coming and going away from art throughout my life; coming back is often a comfort but it is also so easy to step away and say no I cannot become an artist. am I happy as I am now? proud to be who I am now? yes. it’s an easy yes. but this art dilemma is important to me and while I hope to find definite answers as to where I place myself within this whole art-curator thing, I foresee it being something I will continue grappling with.

I like speaking through others’ words, i like collecting physical things and memories of what I like (even if I can’t recall them in an instant..... it happens far too often). but I also wonder! what my own voice would sound like! 

aim: to stop defaulting to “I don’t know”s, or others’ works and words. It will be difficult but please hold me to my word to try