יום שלישי, 12 במאי 2015

My new online Book: Spontanious Photography



I'm writing an online book: Spontanious Photography
Each page has a photo I took that illustrates the text below (in Hebrew and English) that deals with something that I think I understand about spontaneous fine art photography. 

Here are some excerpts from the book:


In recent years I go out  every day for a few hours to wander the streets of Jerusalem, and take photographs of what surprises me, moves me, shocks me, of things I never saw before, or never understood.
Is this spontaneous photography?  Is this planned photography?
Is what I photographed a result of an encounter with  the present, or what makes me shoot this or that is some command I stored in my memory and stepped like a spring in the past, and now, in light of the "new" it is released?

Every morning when I go out to shoot I have no idea what I will shoot. Only after I returned home, if I upload a picture to the Internet - I realize that I had a meeting with the unknown that is unknowable.

On my official diary I write meetings that I plan, meetings that may be canceled, but in the folder of my fine art photographs I document the intimate meetings I had with the world, none of them was canceled, of none of them I knew in advance.

I photograph what surprises me. I think that what I do is going on at  the present, but actually I compare what surprises me to everything I know, which is the past, the acquired knowledge and experience so far.

Spontanious photography is based on some thing that the photographer finds unexpectedly without looking for, or after he gave up the search. The experience of surprise, like the sting of a scorpion, shocks and shakes every cell in the body. The surprise is unexpected, some thing that the thought was not ready for.

Spontaneity, the main topic of this book, is contrary to planning (staged photography).
Spontaneous is close to the odd, because the odd triggers the attention. Planned is close to the known, because there's a similarity between the plan and its execution. Known and odd  are also opposites. The odd is not known, the known is not odd.

Photography is considered as a tool for self-expression. It seems that the self that is expressed in staged photography is the thought while the self that is expressed in the spontaneous photography is the subconscious.

Some photographers depend on new places, these are nomadic photographers, doomed to travel. But the natural light is always new and surprising, even if it illuminates familiar places.

The practice of photography was in its infancy so precious that only few people of means could afford it. This social constraints seem to affect the character of photography as the early years shape a child's personality. Expensive film development  and expensive equipment forced photographers to plan their work carefully and only then to carry it out, namely, shooting was planned  and not spontaneous , and spontaneity of modern photography is the result of lower production costs.





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