Pattern Photography Quotes

Photography is light-writing, the language of images. Less abstract than written or spoken language, it selects images from the existing world of appearances and arranges them in patterns. The camera-eye doesn't think, it recognizes. It shows us what we already know, but don't know that we know.

Every experience has a pattern and sometimes it teaches us through the spirit of patience captured, that there are no coincidences in life.

All writing is essentially autobiographical because our composed thought patterns reflect our accumulated life experiences. At some level, every type of work, whether it is literature, poetry, music, painting, photography, sculpture, or architecture, is always a portrait of the creator. We cannot escape ourselves any more than we can outrun our shadow.

A stronger analogy to Eisenstein's analysis of the rising pattern in the music and the visuals can be found in the contrapuntal practice in music whereby a theme is juxtaposed against either an augmented (the note values are doubled) or diminished (the note values are halved) version of itself. The listener can thus simultaneously experience two different temporal elaborations of the same melodic line across a single block of chronological time, just as the viewer/listener in Alexander Nevsky can experience two different temporal elaborations of the rising motion across a single block of chronological time. (Needless to say, an oppositional "counterpoint" could also be set up by creating, for instance, an upward movement in the music and a downward one in the visuals.) But the experience here is doubly enriched, since the simultaneity also includes two different modes of perception, visual and aural, which is, one suspects, one of the underlying raisons d'être of the gesamtkunstwerk. Even on the simplest of levels, then, Eisenstein's "vertical montage" involves the simultaneous, layered presentation of a number of different elements. For the first shot, these layers would stack up as follows: 1. Graphic perception (photography) 2. Musical perception (score) 3. Upward movement 1 (graphic) 4. Upward movement 2 (musical) 5. Synchronicity 1 (graphic) 6. Synchronicity 2 (musical)

Besides, Jake knew, as Eliot had known, as all artists ought to know, that every story, like single work of art—from the cave paintings to whatever was playing at the Park Theater in Cobleskill to his own puny books—was in conversation with every other work of art: bouncing against its predecessors, drawing from its contemporaries, harmonizing with the patterns. All of it, paintings and choreography and poetry and photography and performance art and the ever-fluctuating novel, was whirling away in an unstoppable spin art machine of its own. And that was a beautiful, thrilling thing.

I met Chris at the Student Union. We both used to study there between our 9:30 and 11:30 classes. I had seen him on campus before. He was always wearing this yellow sweatshirt and giant headphones. The kind of headphones that say, “I may not take my clothes seriously. I may not have brushed or even washed my hair today. But I pronounce the word ‘music’ with a capital ‘M.’ Like God.” So I had noticed him before. He had Eddie Vedder hair. Ginger brown, tangly. He was too thin (much thinner than he is now), and there were permanent smudges under his eyes. Like he was too cool to eat or sleep. I thought he was dreamy. I called him Headphone Boy. I couldn’t believe my luck when I realized we studied in the Union at the same time. Well, I studied. He would pull a paperback out of his pocket and read. Never a textbook. Sometimes, he’d just sit there with his eyes closed, listening to music, his legs all jangly and loose. He gave me impure thoughts. (...) There we were. In the Student Union. He always sat in the corner. And I always sat one row across from him, three seats down. I took to leaving my 9:30 class early so I could primp and be in my spot looking casual by the time he sauntered in. He never looked at me – or anyone else, to my relief – and he never took off his headphones. I used to fantasize about what song he might be listening to… and whether it would be the first dance at our wedding… and whether we’d go with traditional wedding photography or black and white… Probably black and white, magazine style. There’d be lots of slightly out-of-focus, candid shots of us embracing with a romantic, faraway look in our eyes. Of course, Headphone Boy already had a faraway look in his eyes, which my friend Lynn attributed to “breakfast with Mary Jane.” This started in September. Sometime in October, one of his friends walked by and called him “Chris.” (A name, at last. “Say it loud and there’s music playing. Say it soft and it’s almost like praying.”) One Tuesday night in November, I saw him at the library. I spent the next four Tuesday nights there, hoping it was a pattern. It wasn’t. Sometimes I’d allow myself to follow him to his 11:30 class in Andrews Hall, and then I’d have to run across campus to make it to my class in the Temple Building. By the end of the semester, I was long past the point of starting a natural, casual conversation with him. I stopped trying to make eye contact. I even started dating a Sig Ep I met in my sociology class. But I couldn’t give up my 10:30 date with Headphone Boy. I figured, after Christmas break, our schedules would change, and that would be that. I’d wait until then to move on. All my hope was lost. And then… the week before finals, I showed up at the Union at my usual time and found Chris sitting in my seat. His headphones were around his neck, and he watched me walk toward him. At least, I thought he was watching me. He had never looked at me before, never, and the idea made my skin burn. Before I could solve the problem of where to sit, he was talking to me. He said, “Hey.” And I said, “Hi.” And he said, “Look…” His eyes were green. He kind of squinted when he talked. “I’ve got a 10:30 class next semester, so… we should probably make other arrangements.” I was struck numb. I said, “Are you mocking me?” “No,” he said, “I’m asking you out.” “Then, I’m saying yes.” “Good..,” he said, “we could have dinner. You could still sit across from me. It would be just like a Tuesday morning. But with breadsticks.” “Now you’re mocking me.” “Yes.” He was still smiling. “Now I am.” And that was that. We went out that weekend. And the next weekend. And the next. It was wildly romantic.

The final principle is that, more often than not, originality lies on the far side of unoriginality. The Finnish American photographer Arno Minkkinen dramatizes this deep truth about the power of patience with a parable about Helsinki’s main bus station. There are two dozen platforms there, he explains, with several different bus lines departing from each one—and for the first part of its journey, each bus leaving from any given platform takes the same route through the city as all the others, making identical stops. Think of each stop as representing one year of your career, Minkkinen advises photography students. You pick an artistic direction—perhaps you start working on platinum studies of nudes—and you begin to accumulate a portfolio of work. Three years (or bus stops) later, you proudly present it to the owner of a gallery. But you’re dismayed to be told that your pictures aren’t as original as you thought, because they look like knockoffs of the work of the photographer Irving Penn; Penn’s bus, it turns out, had been on the same route as yours. Annoyed at yourself for having wasted three years following somebody else’s path, you jump off that bus, hail a taxi, and return to where you started at the bus station. This time, you board a different bus, choosing a different genre of photography in which to specialize. But a few stops later, the same thing happens: you’re informed that your new body of work seems derivative, too. Back you go to the bus station. But the pattern keeps on repeating: nothing you produce ever gets recognized as being truly your own. What’s the solution? “It’s simple,” Minkkinen says. “Stay on the bus. Stay on the fucking bus.” A little farther out on their journeys through the city, Helsinki’s bus routes diverge, plunging off to unique destinations as they head through the suburbs and into the countryside beyond. That’s where the distinctive work begins. But it begins at all only for those who can muster the patience to immerse themselves in the earlier stage—the trial-and-error phase of copying others, learning new skills, and accumulating experience.

Technology also made some of the established principles of image-making meaningless, such as the idea that symmetrical images are more static and perhaps less interesting than asymmetrical images. Symmetry is easier to achieve with mechanical means, so I used my collection of digital tools to break the rules, explore perfect symmetry and create repeatable patterns. Digital Camera, 2017

When I take a picture of a derelict sign, I already begin to see and find the patterns and shapes that will form the final piece. Once I get the image in the studio, I begin to layer the patterns created, making sure to save the patterns I particularly like. I never lose a layer of work during this process; I simply continue to build and modify those patterns that appeal to me. Digital Camera, 2017