Why Slow Photography? Why Poetry?

Photoshop bye bye.

 It's not strictly about the Jpeg or RAW, but about expediency: one has to decide if to shoot now,  or work later, in the computer.  

To me it is still about 'the decisive moment'.

Cooking later is messing with it. You can ' Spray and Pray' if you don't trust the processing of the camera, but if you could shoot without Photoshop in film times, why not can't you do it now? 

Shooting must be akin to the Art of the Archery. Just one shot, right to the core.

 It is about giving oneself restrictions in what is known as 'Slow Photography', to limit the damage made by Commercial Photography.  

Take those shots that really matter, avoid to come back from holiday with thousands. You'll hardly cope with them in the Winter evenings.

Take your time and you'll enjoy your travels much more.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/obsessions/2011/01/the_slowphotography_movement.html

 I try to keep things as simple as possible, in order not to spoil the realism. Commercial Photography has other needs, realism is not necessarily needed by it. 

Let the marriage hacks beautify, a price has been paid for that. Women however are beginning to rebel against the loss of personality. 

See:http://petapixel.com/2014/02/28/raw-beauty-talks-empowering-portraits-women-without-make-photoshop/

Now, why Poetry? In fact there is only one moment in its history that  Photography has shared with Poetry: Surrealism, in the 1930s. 

'La beaute' sera convulsive ou ne sera pas' (Breton). The photographer must become a seer. Poets-photographers  use collage, masks, double exposure, crops of limbs in order to reach the unconscious.
Beauty was excessive or strange, even bestial - it was not homogeneized.

And yet, at its Victorian beginnings photography had been much simpler: it was about reproducing faithfully the beauty of Nature. 

In the 1930s however, after the Russian Revolution, it became about reporting the Reality of the human experience:  workers could look at last at other workers, and build a social consciousness. 
Social photography became an element of the Press and of the political landscape.

And in the 1970s, with conceptual art and semiotics, photography entered the galleries, becoming one of the Arts.

Some of us however kept a soft side for Surrealism in the sense Francesca Woodman was still carrying it through the 1970s:

She was a seer all right.

So, what now? To separate this blog from the many about gear, I would like it to be about ways we do photography. 

Which is usually called poetics. But Photo & Poetics sounded stuffy, so for the time being I'll leave Photo & Poetry, and accept a slant towards Surrealism.

However, you can discuss any style and technique you want. Please feel free to send me  images and some narration and I'll give it a look for publication. New ways of shooting is what we are all looking after. So, your contribution is important.

Note - Agust 2014

A marriage beautifier at DPR  keeps flaming me advising to worry about poetry, instead of photography.

I must restate here for the uneducated that I take poetry in the original greek meaning of  poiesis, to create.

The pair photo/poetry also hints at the origins of written language,  when icon and sound first converged in a pictographic language such as Ancient Egyptian.

I deem it self evident that it helps understanding the very powerful tool that we have in hypertextual blogs, where image helps the text as a bridge across cultures, but still requires the creative urge.

So Photo and Poetry.