Frames of Reference

“I feel the carousel starting slowly
And going faster and faster: desk, papers, books,
Photographs of friends, the window and the trees
Merging in one neutral band that surrounds
Me on all sides, everywhere I look.
And I cannot explain the action of leveling,
Why it should all boil down to one
Uniform substance, a magma of interiors.”
— John Ashbery, from “Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror”

 
How does one begin to understand a system that has no rules? A system that can't be defined or explained because it operates outside of the rules of - not necessarily ordinary - but ‘expected’ experience.

As well as having a background in Art, I'm also math minded, and so, I'm always looking for things to make sense, for things to add up. I found myself sliding down many levels of thought which were more abstract than direct. I was down the rabbit hole.

Soon enough, I began to dream about these photos, and the people who inhabit them; they began to infuse not only my waking and working life, but my dreaming one. And I began to conceive of them as not just photographs that other people ‘took’, but ones that needed to be taken. Moments that were recognized as having some essential nature which needed to be captured.

As much as the ‘feeling’ of encountering a great Vernacular left me without words, there was an undeniable, inexorable quality to them. And although chance may have played a role in their coming into being, the fact remains that each of these photos has been kept, saved, or otherwise salvaged for one reason only: each hand that has held it had felt the necessity of its existence.

Soon enough, my frame of reference, Art History, began to limit and confine my thinking, and, like a giant in a low-ceilinged room, I needed more thought-space.

I began to look at Photographs which made any claims to ‘Art’ with skepticism; even the slightest hint of being staged left me disappointed. More than that, disapproving: of any inauthenticity, of any intentionality, of any ego attached to its creation. I had crossed the vernacular threshold fully now, with both feet, crossing into this new terrain. With no map or compass, I was free to wander.