The Observer Effect

“In science, the term observer effect refers to changes that the act of observation will make on a phenomenon being observed. “
— Wikipedia

We live in a world that needs to come to conclusions, and for this reason many people find vernacular photographs to be perplexing: because there's no system understanding, because there's no formalized method of deciphering, where no single principal abides. There’s a freedom of thought that’s invited, which translates to a freedom of mind.

It’s because there is no understanding or spelled-out frame-of-reference that language is let loose in our imaginations and our minds, let loose in such a way that we begin to question our own comfortable modes of perceiving the world that we currently live in. Any conclusion we draw will lead us down a path of more questions; a feedback loop of continual inquiry which will never be answered. The only conclusion we can come to is that there is no understanding, only interpretation.

You must come to these photos on their own terms, with new eyes; the terms run the entire gamut of thought, feeling, emotion: acceptance, hope, empathy, clarity, confusion, condemnation, frustration, resignation, redemption. And while no doubt, we change things in the act of our observation of them, as is the case with snapshots, it turns out that the opposite of one expected is – also – what is true, and that everything you think is occurring or is about to occur happened differently, and was about something else, entirely.

The vernacular photograph exists on all levels of thought, space and time, it is never an either-or situation, it breaks all rules of logic, it doesn’t add up, is more than the sum of its parts. And while it is true that the photo is changed by our beholding of it, the world is also changed, and more than anything, we are changed forever changed by them. They make us believe that all things and everything is possible, and that all thoughts, feelings, and interpretations are valid: a never-ending party to which everyone is invited. All shapes, sizes, colors and conditions are welcomed.

Vernacular photographs represent an ecstatic embrace of the human condition, and those who are beguiled by a leak of light, who have felt that raw, inexplicable delight, find there’s no way back from the brink of that beauty.


- Vanessa Daou