I am interested in Still Lifes because I find myself taking them, making them. It wasn't always this way. For a long time I fell into that category of Photographers who only captured what was in front of them. I felt, as I suspect many photographers do, that my job was to see, observe, witness, without "doing" anything. That kind of distance, that seemingly rigorous discipline not to interfere, not to move a single thing – that line in the sand that had the taste of an "ethic" – well it made sense at the time. I don't condemn it, but my sense of things is somewhat different now. Even when I spent years taking pictures of bottles, arranging them in front of my lens, quickly because the Sun was rapidly dropping to the horizon over Queen Anne Hill, I imagined that I was on Safari, hunting nimble game. Somehow it was important for me to not be in total control of the process, as if that made a difference. Perhaps I wouldn't call that an "ethic", more likely "a metaphysic", again as if that made any difference. I don't think I could ever be completely in control of the process; whether because of inability or lack of necessity is incidental. But what I know now is that it is impossible to be completely objective. To be here is to be complicit, to witness something is to take responsibility for it's coming into being.
At some point I realized that I had been brought up with the notion that being a Photographer and being an Artist were two separate categories. I have spent ten years and change trying to be the other instead of the one. Ironically I find that I'd like to be both, and it's a matter of finding the assumption switch. Lately I have realized that I had another given when it comes to Still Lifes. I'm not a painter and I can't draw. In many ways I have known that I got into photography because I wanted to create, and that photography was a compensation for the belief that you weren't an artist if you couldn't draw. Along with this came the perverse bias against representational art. Not knowing how difficult it is to try and record what you see by hand, I am suspect of people who try. This of course is non-sense, but it is connected with something deeper. I am suspect of people for whom the craft dominates the work. When someone only cares about technique, or slavishly recreates a tradition, or advances to a point where they can "pass" without going deeper into difficult territory, then I find myself dismissive. It's funny because while I know enough about photography to hold high standards, I apply my bias liberally. We all do, I suspect, and it's a matter not of being a Saint, but of sinning less. The fact is we are generally the ones who suffer most from our blind spots...
This is a lead in to tell you that I have found myself looking down on still lifes, and representational art in general, only to face the fact that I can't tell the difference anymore between abstract and representational, between still life and moving life. I'm not trying to be cute, here, it's just the way it is.
