Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Your Artist Statement is WRONG!

Sand Castle, (c) 2007 by Jeane Vogel, Infrared Photograph
Excuse me?

He repeated it: Your artist statement is wrong!

Wrong? It's an artist statement! It's my interpretation of my own work. It's my opinion! The only way it could be wrong is if I were lying!

No, he said. I disagree with it.

How can you disagree with an artist's statement? But he did. He took issue with my premise: Photography does not capture a moment. Photography captures the essence of the moment.

I have to explain this a lot. Of COURSE it captures the moment, I'm told, with a look that continues: Are you an idiot? Perhaps. But I stick with my statement. A snapshot might capture a moment. A photograph captures far more -- more than we can see, sometimes more than we can feel.

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