Framing the View of Reality
In a world of Entropy, the camera is an excellent tool to capture the constant change that takes a wear on the animate, inanimate and environment. Whether moments or years later, the comparison of time from when the image was created, and now, is the obscene reminder that things decay and break down. It is also an essential reminder that there is beauty in the deterioration.
A window is a literal and figurative frame of view. It allows for a cropping of reality, and restrict depth and distance between the viewer and the view. A false sense of security, and a form of censorship, a window both invites freedom and can create a prison by making difference of 'in here' and 'out there'.
Desert View through Railcar (Rhyolite), tad764, 2021. Van Dyke Brown photographic print, 6.5"x 6.5".
When we gaze through a window we become the passive viewer, the observer. Our duty is to use this as a portal or transition between outside and in. It allows us to see things from another perspective. The view through a window becomes a metaphor for seeing things through a filter. It allows examination of the essential and habitual world while attempting to put a layer between us and that world.
Over time we realize there is no protection from the destructive world outside because even this sacred place behind the window...behind the curtain...is a simply a tool of perspective, a suspension of time and a framing of reality. The windows of our structures, like the windows of our minds, eventually succumb to deterioration and change in perspective. At times they are in fact the weak point in our walls, no longer a strength but a risk. Seeing 'the big picture' means stepping outside the fourth wall and questioning the frame of view.
We create windows in our minds, frames of another time and place...but even these have a bias and can get blurry and damaged. What we have left are memories and photographs of the past as compared to now...views of a view. How genuine are the created views in comparison to the true thing?
Damaged View (Nashville), tad719, 2021. Van Dyke Brown photographic print, 6.5"x 6.5".
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