Feeling the Difference - Fine Art Photography and Digital Media

Growing up working class, I never imagined a career path that would be creative and flexible let alone in the Art World. From young age, like most kids, I would doodle in my notebooks and create fantastical scenarios where ever I roamed. In the woods, in the forest, by the river, and in my home - alone or with friends and family - there was and continues to be an explosion of expressive “what ifs” playing through my mind. Art was never presented as a creative outlet, most of my life was an exploration of how to express my minds eye.

One way or another, I ended up with a camera in my hand trying to convince myself that I would be an action sports photographer. It’s funny because that’s not what I truly wanted. Though I believed as a teenager that there would be fun inclusive career opportunities if i went down that path. During that journey, I stumbled into galleries museums and artist run centres and my relationship with the camera started shifting. I craved a painterly feeling from all images. In time a started to believe the camera had much more range that a simple tool to capture the world around us. The camera is no different from a paintbrush, pencil, or any other mark making tool. Salvador Dali, Francis Bacon, and Yves Tanguy were a few of the first 20th century painters that latched on to my subconscious bringing their reoccurring themes into my own aesthetic values.

Within varying degrees they all explored subconscious imagery
which is an interesting, inclusive, yet esoteric way to go about painting. Using conventional painting techniques of the 20th century, Dali would
exaggerate and warp the forms of animals, people, places, and things. Bacon, often focusing on portraits, would capture a moment of “unease” through his subjects, smudging the paint - as if he’s being violent to the canvas. Outside of the aforementioned two, the only truly familiar aspect of Tanguy’s paintings is the light and shadow. His painting are outer worldly and calm, emanating an eerie essence.

In the early years of my young adult life, images of their paintings and many other surreal works haunting my mind pushing me to crave an itch to create. Using the camera as a brush to paint with light, I may many attempts at embodying an aura I lust for in paintings. Disappointing, but the digital camera has a whole different essence. I almost felt the aura I was looking for through analog Black and White photography. But that also, has its own aura and feelings. Perhaps this is because traditionally fine art has been primarily paintings; holding on to some kind of inherent upper status. Or its simple and, the mediums are just different so they visual read and feel different. Maybe both, but maybe also I am not artistically there.

The camera was bringing me more angst than pleasure. Yet, I married the Photographer believing I could make a career out of it. With no additional resources for a way out and planning to finish a degree in 2 years. I thought creativity was doomed to be a mediocre angle to my person. Still, I craved to build, I craved to create, and I craved to see something new. In 2016, my eyes were blessed by the collage work of Wangechi Mutu, a Kenyan visual artist living in New York City. Finally, I saw something I truly thought was new and exciting. The work was delicate, sullen and challenging. Her work embodies so many paintly feelings, yet it was paper. My artistic practice of collage was an unexpected child of my creativity. And Mutu’s collages were the visual push I never saw coming.

Regardless, consuming images and creating images is constant in my life, so consciously I’ve decided to look at images through a criteria to help myself understand images.

• 1. Whats the medium (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment)
• 2. Concept (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment)
• 3. Technical Proficiency (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment)
• 4. Who is the Artist (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment)
• 5. Style (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment)
• 6. Who is the viewer (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment)
• 7. What is being depicted (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment)

Not only understand images as images but also understand them in relation to the “global” cultural canon and in relation to their local cultural environment. The goal being to better grasp ways to contextualize how and why images make me feel the way I do.