A Quote by John Divola
I don't look for things to see how they function as metaphors.... You can't photograph the sublime. You can only traffic in the specific and its relationship to the symbolic.
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What a photograph shows us is how a particular thing could be seen, or could be made to look - at a specific moment, in a specific context, by a specific photographer employing specific tools.
But it is also untrue that I have nothing specific in mind. As with my landscapes: I see countless landscapes, photograph barely 1 in 100,000, and paint barely 1 in 100 of those that I photograph. I am therefore seeking something quite specific; from this I conclude that I know what I want.
A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind.
An intimate relationship does not banish loneliness. Only when we are comfortable with who we are can we truly function independently in a healthy way, can we truly function within a relationship. Two halves do not make a whole when it comes to a healthy relationship: it takes two wholes.
A good photograph will prove to the viewer how little our eyes permit us to see. Most people, really, don’t see-see only what they have always seen and what they expect to see-where a photographer, if he’s good, will see everything. And better if he sees things he doesn’t expect to see.
How foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy. I had confused the appearance of trees and automobiles, and people with a reality itself, and believed that a photograph of these appearances to be a photograph of it. It is a melancholy truth that I will never be able to photograph it and can only fail. I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.
In any architecture, there is an equity between the pragmatic function and the symbolic function.
In all my work there's this notion of the melancholic. You can make a photograph about the sublime, but you can't make the sublime itself.
I never look for a photograph. The photograph finds me and says, I'm here! and I say, Yes, I see you. I hear you.
In most companies people make a specific contribution to the company in their function. But it is not expressed in terms of profit, only in terms of performing their function better.
When you go for first date, you are so conscious about what you are wearing, how you smell, how much money you have in your wallet. You have to plan the day - you have to plan the traffic - but in a relationship, you take all the things for granted.
My idea being that for the sublime and the beautiful and the interesting, you do not have to look far away. You have to know how to see.
I think I’ve said this before many times—that photography allows you to learn to look and see. You begin to see things you had never paid any attention to. And as you photograph, one of the benefits is that the world becomes a much richer, juicier, visual place. Sometimes it is almost unbearable — it is too interesting. And it isn’t always just the photos you take that matters. It is looking at the world and seeing things that you never photograph that could be photographs if you had the energy to keep taking pictures every second of your life.
Look who's calling the cauldron black." "Kettle. It’s a kettle. Get your metaphors right." "That wasn’t a metaphor. It was a, you know..." He stared off into space, blinking. "One of those things that’s symbolic of another thing. But isn’t the same thing. Just like it." "You mean a metaphor?" "No! It’s like a story...like...a proverb! That’s it." "I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a proverb. Maybe it was an analogy." "I don’t think so.
It's hard for people to see how they can change how dismal things look, but there are still wonderful things to sing about. Music is the only way we are capable of talking about the most important things.
What interests me in [Lincoln in the Bardo] is a slight perverse balance between the sublime and the grotesque. Like you could have landed only on the sublime. But my argument is that the sublime couldn't exist without this other half.
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