ku # 398 and a commentary for your consideration

Lately I've been reading The Photography Reader - a comprehensive collection of 20th-century writings on photography (as the intro states). The book includes essays by a number of photographers (such as Edward Weston and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy) and key thinkers (such as Susan Sontag, John Szarkowski and Andy Grundberg) that trace the development of ideas about photography.

On the whole it is very interesting reading notwithstanding some writings of incredibly dense prose and/or obtuse academic theory. Example - I like the idea of, "The awkwardness which accompanies the over-long contemplation of a photograph arises from a consciousness of the monocular perspective system of representation as a systematic deception....To remain long with a single image is to risk the loss of our imaginary command of the look...The image then no longer receives our look...it rather, as it were, avoids our gaze...As alienation intrudes into our captivation by the image we can, by averting our gaze or turning a page, reinvest our looking with authority. "

All of which seems to mean that staring at a picture too long can f--- you up, so move on and come back to it later for a fresh perspective. Makes sense to me.

But, in addition to the understanding gleaned from the deciphered encryptions, I relish my time spent reading verbose and obtuse writings because of the discovery of concise and compact little word/phrase ideas that are spread throughout the works like - if you will - tidy little rabbit pearls in a field of academic detritus.

In the aforementioned excerpt I am captivated by the notion of a "monocular perspective system of representation as a systematic deception", and, by the idea of having an "imaginary command of the look", or, how about the though of a photograph "avoiding our gaze"? And who amongst us can resist the seductive idea of "looking with authority"? Altogether interesting stuff.