I`m beginning to miss painting a lot.
I have been taking daily photos daily. I`ve found the camera and the photo editing tools to be superb for examining objects, their condition, presence and significance. The immediate realism of photos, and the faith we have in the veracity of the photo makes this an excellent medium to do this, to discuss memory and give a concrete base to a text. I mainly use sill life photography to do this, but also medium distance photos of buildings and in nature.
I find the "hunter-and-prey" aspect of photography unpleasant. I dislike the secretiveness of its black box processing. Shooting people is highly unpleasant, a controlling and highly unequal ritual in which the person being photographed (the subject) is pushed around and ultimately objectified, with very little control over the way they are represented.
I suspect that, as an art form, photography attracts a certain profile and that profile contains a disproportionately large number of very guarded, controlling, and possible abusive individuals. There have been a series of cases with fashion photographers being exposed as such. Nice people who become photographers are aware of portrait photography's unsavoury aspects, and attempt to engage their subjects more democratically in the representational process. But I suspect it is intrinsic to photography with it's tiny viewfinders and hidden image recording.
I found the camera very good for photographing trees and medium distance nature. It's responsiveness to light and detail is incredible. At a longer distance, with more general views, I found the camera brought forward cliches, or at best a certain obviousness.
Some things I miss from painting:
1. The physicality of paint is marvelous. It has three-dimensionality: texture. Photography is smooth and dreamlike: Apollonian.
2. Mixing colours is marvelous. And somehow always surprising. And I have a big batch of expensive paints waiting for me in Scotland.
3. Painting landscapes is very "out there". It's a declaration. Yes, that is uncomfortable, but it isn't furtive like photography. I like sorting out the equipment and deciding what to take.
4. Lugging stuff- palettes, brushes, tripod around is annoying. But packing and unpacking and the ritualistic processes most painters develop over years makes them very aware of how their work is a self-conscious construction.
5. In painting you can respond physically, with marks and gestures and they are layered so you convey a notion of process in time.. There's an eye-emotion- hand- chain which allows mark-making itself to be way of conveying meaning. Photography is dreamlike. I like this too, but I miss the former, and how difficult it is.
Fingers crossed: eventually the COVID-19 situation will be resolved and I can do a painting trip: a massive 6 monther from Ecuador down to the tip of Patagonia. Or something like that.
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