fluxusamongus' photostream

When the peacocks roam the jungle of virulent poison,
the flocks take no delight in gardens of medicinal plants,
no matter how beautiful they may be,
for peacocks thrive on the essence of virulent poison.

-Attributed to Dharmaraksita (10th Century CE)

Photography is practice—like the practice of law, meditation or arranging flowers. Sometimes the intuitive directness of photography acts as an antidote to the pressures and constraints of my law practice. Sometimes the rigors of my law practice acts as the antidote to my unfocused art. Sometimes, it is necessary to practice with poison and forgo the antidote.

Everything is in flux. Analog photography is now rapidly being replaced by digital imaging. This change is in fact progress, which is the promise of Modernism. Digital images are cheaper, faster, more precise, easier to reproduce and can be transmitted worldwide with the click of a mouse. Film based technology once embodied progress and Modernism.

Modernism, however, points in only one direction—forward toward progress. Post-modernism points to possibilities—forward, backward, sideways, in, through, around. Post-modernism is the gateway to alternative photographic processes. Cyanotype, pinhole cameras, wet plate collodion and now film—these are evolutionary dead ends from the Modernist's perspective. Progress has passed them by on the way to the future. Practitioners of alternative photographic processes are post-modernists. We circle back around, pick up the alchemical texts and techniques, and mix the archaic with the digital to create something beyond the reach of practitioners of the past—or the future.

The world if full of opportunities to practice.

Post Script--Here's someone else with thoughts on the practice of making film and antidotes to a virtual world:

www.kenpaulrosenthal.com/grace.htm

www.kenpaulrosenthal.com/antidote.htm