Conversing With Photography

A couple years ago, I developed a photography project called “Isolations”. The idea was to make a series of pictures, typically close-up, of things isolated from their surroundings. The most common technique was to blur the backgrounds, but dimming it, desaturating, and so on, are all reasonable possibilities.

One of those pictures wasn’t quite that simple, in that there were a series of items that moved progressively out of focus, while the main subject was clear. I took the picture casually, not thinking it was a great example of what I was looking for, but interested in what was there, what might be made of it.

Here is the picture:

Looking at it later, the weeds seemed to be playing “follow the leader”, and this led me to think of how this was a picture of leadership. It was a positive metaphor in that the leader was involved, in the front, blazing the trail, rather than in the rear telling other people to do all the work. On the other hand, it was also a picture of leaders who are “prickly”, who may be difficult to work for, abrasive to the people they are leading, and so on. Both worked, it just depended on what one wanted to bring out.

It was interesting to me that these concepts were not in mind when taking the picture, but really jumped out afterward. I actually learned some things about leadership and how to think about it. The process led me to think about what other things could be pictured as part of a photography project.

This back and forth sequence was like a conversation between myself and my photographic activities. Seems like an interesting idea – to use photography itself as a way to think through things. Even if a good picture does not result, there would be value in the process just like with any other conversation. In fact, might this be a comment on the artistic process in general?