I just wanted to mention a new outfit, The UK Street Collective at http://ukstreetcollective.co.uk where we blog the best of our street photography.

We are in the process of adding to our current number of 4 photographers and we are working on a mission statement to define our goals for the future.

Thank you.

Paul Treacy
http://ukstreetcollective.blogspot.com

Its late and I’m tired and I’ve no idea what sort of sense this might make but here goes!

A few immediate thoughts…..

“For a start, the photographer’s images aren’t invented. In order to photograph something, that something has to be out there in the world, in some sense. While the stylistic choices of the photographer can render objects in different ways, we can’t escape the fact that photography entails objects (in the loose sense). These objects are indeed the product of a human society and, by extension, infer the existence of other people; regardless of how much we try to avoid photographing people, they’re always implied.”

Curious where you see natural occurences in this, objects that are not “a product of a human society”? Or do you mean the existence of other people ‘implied’ simply by the act of making the photograph, of creating the frame?

What about the transient episodes of nature’s ‘story’ that surround us? I’ve photographed ‘flowers’ that have grown out of frost; a series of ‘hieroglyphs’ formed by fallen branches after a gale; a ‘fireworks display’ of water ripples on sand; a ‘spiral galaxy’ swirl of white waterfall froth on black peat-stained water; and much more. Ordinary stuff I guess, made extraordinary by the way photography can render it through freezing small moments of time, or compressing larger periods of time into one frame. Like words, different meanings, by being ordered and disordered again.

Auden quote was interesting. I think though that the sheer beauty of words are in their democracy – those words that are available to ALL of us can, by the act of the ‘artist’ be recreated into a thing of wonder and beauty. Its that ‘recreation’ of words that is exciting and that is their power. I see no “corruption” in the “debasement” of language that Auden refers to – rather I see enrichment and evolution. And I see the same in the proliferation of image making that surrounds us.

The whole notion of Auden’s “purely private verbal world” is anathema to me I must confess. That has an unappealing element of ‘wastefulness’ to it – words that can (perhaps) only be used once and then no more. Disposable, in a sense. The strength of words resides in their universality, their richness of meaning, their ease of misinterpretation, their chameleonic presence all around us, their use and misuse, and yes their history. Like photography too I think. We see, we record. We examine. We learn. And then we fail. And the process begins all over again. But next time we may ‘see’ differently.

And I like the idea of photography and poetry/writing simply existing for all, drawing their strength from the fact that they come from a place and formed of things we all recognize, but which we may sometimes be challenged by, and need to learn more to understand by (being forced) to think differently, seeing from another perspective.

Anyway, one of my favourite poems (from a recently well-earned Nobel prize winner) which uses a few simple words to hint at the depth of other stories that surround us which we’ll never fully know, maybe if we are lucky only ever glimpse but not understand, and must simply wonder at. This has informed my view of the world, of things that leave their fingerprint on the glass of our existence seen only at an oblique angle, or glimpsed out of the corner of an eye.

From ‘March ’79′
by Tomas Transtromer

Tired of all who come with words, words but no language
I went to the snow-covered island.
The wild does not have words.
The unwritten pages spread themselves out in all directions!
I come across the marks of roe-deer’s hooves in the snow.
Language but no words.

The few organisations who bother conversing at all generally keep those conversations brief and exclusive to other organisations of similar stature. There’s no attempt at all to engage with anything happening online. At worst, and too regularly, they show a complete disregard for current events – it doesn’t take a PR or marketing genius to induce that an organisation founded on conflict reportage tweeting at the height of the Libyan Uprising with self-promotional material and totally ignoring the Uprising probably isn’t a smart idea. Not only do they not know how to engage, they also don’t know when to shut up.

And that’s before we even get to talking about digital media specific art work that has been created. The understanding there is even more lacking, on the whole.

They’re terrified of making mistakes, they’re terrified of admitting they don’t know everything, and they’re terrified ceding their positions as authorities in the medium. But they’re ceding their position as authorities in the medium by ignoring both general debate and the new developments in the medium.

The funny thing is, the whole of both digital media and social media basically boils down to the same oft-spoken truism about cameras generally – they’re only as interesting* as the people using them.

*ST84Photo Blog hereby reserves the right to fetishize the Rollei as an object, however. James Dean was cute.