mind
fuss#1
#1 Mind
Taking photos is more than an act of capturing a moment. Before the digital cameras, internet and social communities, the process of producing and sharing a photograph took a much longer time. It takes time for processing, printing and sharing with others. When we can finally see the photo, we are seeing a past event. But now, all those processes are done in a few seconds. Photographs can be made and shared almost immediately, without any time lag between the actual event and the dissemination of the photographic record of that event. They are now in sync. That’s why you can find something like these on your Facebook: morning, a friend posted an image of today’s amazing blue sky on her way to work; her lunch box, and/or the afternoon tea with her friends in somewhere, then the evening scene, saying that she
finally get off from work and time for dinner, shopping, dating and happy hours. Unless you are on your social communities, you can always know what your friends are doing right now, in where and with whom. A real reality show! Here, photographs on social media are used as an evidence to tell people what is happening in every moment. It is a real time life report. And as a piece of real time life report, its value lies on its immediateness. But trickily, it is also its immediateness takes away its value--
By disseminating a photograph of a current happening, the happening is extended from the reality into a piece of image, with this, we are not only experiencing the reality, we are also given a chance to experience the projection of the reality again. It is what described “value lies on its(photograph’s) immediateness�. But on the day after that, when you post a new photograph, it immediately replaces the last photo you posted since it is now the new one showing what is happening now. The last one you posted is outdated, it is no longer able to tell others what you were doing, it is dead. They are one-off and fastconsumed in nature.
Despite such nature, a kind of internal experience given by the act of photo-taking to the photographer makes it so much more than a fast-consumed activity. When we find something we would like to shot, when we are finding the “best” composition within the frame suggested by the camera, we must be experiencing a subtle or even unaware contemplation between the outside physical world and our inside world: we are trying to relating the world with ourselves, with what we are thinking or desire in our mind; we are seeking the “best”, or say “precise” scene in the world that tell what our mind is also saying-- we contemplate the intangible self in the physical world.
It is this contemplation detaches the photographs from the world, from the happenings, but being a media for self-exploring instead. With such value, photographs are not just simply for being consumed, they are for inner growth.
This issue’s photographs (Bye love.)
fuss is a self-initiated project focusing on the scene of daily life photographs influenced by nowadays’ technology. It aims to reflect on the new nature of daily life photography we made today and to find the value in it. Concept, text, photographs and design are all by Fuse Tsang.