Thursday, January 08, 2009

building your own cameras

Got a link to these unusual cameras today. Seems he builds each camera with the express purpose of shooting a particular subject and ties the camera's construction to the subject matter. Not entirely sure what I think about that. Does the instrument really matter or change the images? It is more performance art at that point, or maybe look at me art? Certainly the end result strikes me as being more about the whole process, rather than just the resulting photographs. That strikes me as a common theme I've seen in various contemporary art galleries - the work is all about what the artist did to create it and the end results are of secondary, if any, importance.

2 comments:

forkboy said...

A writer I follow, who discusses photography, made mention of the notion that Art is really about the process and that the result (a painting, sculpture, etc.) is simply a by-product of the process.

I'm not saying I subscribe to this philosophy, but I find it interesting that you have also mentioned this idea.

Andreas said...

I think this can't be generalized, but yes, here the work of art is not the image, but the combination of camera and image. That's quite OK for me and a good example for the fact that the whole classification system of arts is really for the viewers.

Sure, what this guy does, is not strictly photography, at least from a market point of view, but why should the artist care? It may be a problem for a gallery to market cross-over art (most likely not), it may conflict with some buyers' expectations, but all that can be, probably should be, and here seemingly is irrelevant to the artist. I like that :)