image/text

I just don’t know what I want to convey in this essay. I know how I feel about my site and why I find it interesting but I did not focus on those things while taking pictures of it. When I consider going about the essay in with a “top down” approach I return to thinking that I need to shoot a whole new set of images to convey the meaning I’d like to share. When I look at my images I find them seductive and intriguing but they speak of things other than the site. Most of all, reviewing the images, I recall struggling with the process of capturing an image and conveying a thought through composition and focus.

This series in particular, if I were to put a caption to it, it would be the internal monologue that was playing in my head as I was clicking and clicking. It would go something like: “Symmetry, nice ; and the building vs the flowers, nature and concrete and look how perfectly placed this is; oh, the light on these flowers is great, I like the flowers; but the door, the door is right above the flowers; great, someone walking out of the door; it’s about the fixed and the transient, these leaves are great; wow, i can get the leaves and the door in a single shot; too bad I can’t fit the lights…”

and almost all of the images from this site came about with this internal dialogue… and I wonder if maybe that is a layer worth revealing. 

That’s the thing about text and images in essays. The collaboration is best when each is an independent layer that adds complexity to a subject that need be neither the text itself or what is in the photos. The amazing experience that death of a valley provides comes from the fact that through the combination of text and images the piece expressed a very particular event in time and place but also the essence of timeless elements and their importance in all human lives, things such as home, roots, family, livelihood and all the things that create a human community. The images alone speak of the particular. The text alone is a mix but because text demands of it’s reader to dig into common experiences and concepts, it is general. Together they are a reflexion on… well, very many big subjects such as progress, destruction, community, ecology, politics…  

Hm. 

simple. Keep it simple. 

Thing of asking various users how they feel about my site or how they use it. Using that as text. Also I’d like to show it on a map and give it’s statistics, such as square footage, number of levels etc, because it’s small size compared to it’s many areas, was part of what I liked about it.