Lately I've been wondering too much on the post-production process involved in my photography.

Although I was aware of the obscene amount of PS touch up intherent to my projects, I never really did have any problems whatsoever of notable significance. In other words I was in total complacency. The reason being is that I never felt quite compatible enough with the artisanship of photoshop which so happens to be the "rulebook" of obvious technical mastery in photographic post production, that mainly involves my real passion "cinematography". One might argue that you can not move over to the breach of originality without conquering the rules of the banality.

It's true that I have always seen photography merely as the means to achieve greater understanding of the process involved in film making, which barely deviates through the arrow of time involved in the process. Hence, in order to achieve my "masterplan" (which sounds curiously like a Machivellian third grade Nazi impersonation) I had to go through the basics of color and exposure control, overall cinematic look persistent in conventional cinema.

However, I found myself deeply concerned in my relationship with the art of photography, a discipline in its own right. Photography is not merely the still shots of the cinema, but also something much greater than that: life.

That sort of rang a bell with my conventional and tedious Art History training up to date. It's not much of a Newtonian revealtion in comparison, yet it still holds to its own virtue of thought.

I realized: What I had to achieve through photography, by any means can not be merely towards the technical side, which would be (and already is) a crippling practice in its own right. You can not close the windows to artistic integrity just for the sake of a pragmatical purpose involved in an art form.

Meaning: You can not write short poems, so that you can write better taglines for your company's ads. It's just wrong in attitude, because it will result in a blunt sense of perspective. One always have to aspire to do what is inherent of the given practice's characteristics.

A hard question arises: But what is the characteristic of photography?

What is innately photographic as opposed the cinematographic in comparison? Above mention of the fact of time is undeniable. But what is there in absence of time, and in absence of manipulation in the kinds of photography I have been known to practice? Ir's more or less the spintaneity, the capture of the fleeting time. Yet in no coscious order as to "compose" what is in the frame, but rather to capture it in the viewfinder. And what do you know, there's already a name for that:

Impressionism.

So while I was running through my late and persistent set of oversaturated PS stained photography I thought about doing something a bit extraneous to what has been done so far. Not a major leap, or a sudden change in paradigm, but more a slow sway towards a new outlook. Afterall what is there to be said about the duty of an artist, other than the will and the ability to pursue "change"?

That in mind, I decided to move on to a new era of photography, one of more conscious effort to capture, to record the impression of the moment. This is more or less triggered by what I have been thinking about so far (yes I do have some time to think), but also by the photo you see above this lenghty display of extensive verbiage.

The above photo reminded me instantly of a picture I once saw. I was not sure, if I saw it in a museum or some place, after all it was an impression, a sudden impulse of thought. Then I went through one of my art history texts findingCaillebotte's "Paris: A Rainy Day" )viewable here: [link]) In terms of stylistic composition there are not decisive similarities, other than the natural palette inherent to any cloudy day in an urban landscape. But it was the idea of the impression, that it triggers something regardless of what it is, the idea that you can make some distinctions and build bridges at the same time between two images as perceived through the mind's eye.

That pretty much encouraged me to do works of similar nature, the pursuit of seeking impressions of similar kind, as I see through my minds eye. The relativity as seen by the spectator is arbitrary, and that may well be the strong point, or the charm of this exercise (maybe in futility?)

In any case I present my case unclear as it begs to be, since it's just the glimpse, an impression of what piles up in my cognition, filtered through the words. Yet the colors, they speak a different language.

New York, November, 2004