First Principles of the Third World of Photography

THE WORLD BEYOND DOCUMENTATION AND PURISM

ONE In Photography, as in all arts, the quality of the human imagination is the only thing that counts - technique, and technical proficiency, mean nothing in themselves. TWO There is no essential reason why the creative imagination cannot work with a ray of light acting on a sensitized surface as effectively as it can with a brush laden with pigment. The camera is merely a tool - and like all other tools, such as the painter's brush and the writer's pencil, it can be controlled by the creative imagination. THREE The camera is not a machine, except when it is used mechanically. FOUR We might ask ourselves a very fundamental question: What is a photograph? The usual answer would probably be: a psycho-chemical image suspended in an emulsion, and attached to a piece of paper. But is this definition enough? Perhaps a more complete answer would be: A photograph is a physicochemical image suspended in an emulsion, attached to a piece of paper, implicated in creating a special kind of illusion of "reality," and involved in the mystery of time. FIVE Photography is a way of seeing more intensely and completely, and of "freezing" time in a special way. SIX From the kind of intensive seeing which every good photograph embodies, and from the methods and procedures which the creative photographer can use to push this seeing still further, emerges a surreality which definitely transcends the purely recording function of the camera. This surreality consists of the extension of the individual object into a larger and more significant reality -

the submarine depths and fantastic jungles of psychological association and symbolic meaning. SEVEN There is nothing that is not proper to photography - despite the "experts." EIGHT The camera can use any object as a stepping-stone to a realm of meaning "beyond" the object: It can become a tool to explore the human mind - by exploring the inner world which we project into all objects by emotions and symbolic transference. NINE If the photographer looks intensely enough, he can find the secret images of our fears, joys and desires. Everything is speaking to us - every object. TEN All things are interconnected, whether we see the connections or not. ELEVEN Chance and coincidence are the names we use to denote the unseen relations between things - relations that we don't understand. TWELVE The limitations of photography are nothing more than the limitations of photographers themselves.

"The physical object, to me, is merely a stepping stone to an inner world where the object, with the help of the subconscious drives and focuses perceptions, becomes transmuted into a symbol whose life is beyond the life of the objects we know ..."

(Clarence John Laughlin)