The Aesthetics of Ambiguity! by Raju Peddada “Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.” – Sigmund Freud “The greater the ambiguity, the greater the pleasure!” – Milan Kundera “The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.” – Walter Benjamin
What is ambiguity, and why is it beautiful? Ambiguity is the quality of being open to more than one interpretation, inexactness – and in the realm of visual inexactness, beauty is an evolving phenomenon, a journey, not an end destination, therefore, infinite possibilities of beauty! THE NEW AESTHETIC: Earlier this year, I had introduced my six year study-thesis and proposition titled “Our urban Fragmentation: The Aesthetics of Ambiguity.” This was an original study project-thesis that emanated in the exploration for a Patent-able App-feature for imaging hardware. The dual benefit of this heuristic project was that while the Patent pursuit is still on, this study veered off into a previously unknown region of aesthetics, where a discovery was made: a unique and resonant photographic aesthetic, intrinsic to ambiguity, in our urban condition, that essentially shifts the paradigm, from the conventional still life aesthetic, almost a hundred years old, to the subtle, yet, exotic and dynamic aesthetics of ambiguity. What I had proposed was this: life is movement, and movement is life. Movement is our fundamental state, more so in an urban setting, that fragments us, as we move through our routine, everyday. Our fragmentation manifests mentally, physically and emotionally in the urban setting , yet, we register only the physical one. Therefore, physical movement is fragmentation, and this is, unequivocally, ambiguity. All this movement results in distraction and diffusion, an uncertainty, the indefinite, and a murkiness, which constitute ambiguity. Photographic aesthetes, in order to sense this state of the urban being, need to be mindful. This discovery reminds me of what William James, the father of modern psychology, had once said: “Mindfulness is thinking observation,” – a constant presence of mind, the hereness that is essential for real and active observation of the world. The Discussion: My thesis asserts the discovery of an aesthetic quotient, the phenomenon of beauty, inherent and intrinsic to our transient condition, and since transience is ambiguous, I refer to it as the aesthetics of ambiguity – the very basis for my search! Our urban condition and ambiguousness are not mutually exclusive, nor are beauty and ambiguity, if anything it's symbiotic, and ever expanding like a nebula. Our transience through our environments result in visual textures, in the confluence of light, materials, and of bodies in movement. And this is that texture, seen as kinetic reflections, aberrations or vibrations that reveal
multiple activities and situations simultaneously, that I refer to as the urban condition. It's a dynamic phenomenon! The objective environment does not exist, there's only a perception of it. A perception that relies on habitual ways of thinking and the immediate circumstances. If the still life aesthetic was to objectify our urban condition with its clarity in stillness of materials and individuals, it has missed the point, by at least three generations. Clarity does not reside in stillness, an oxymoron, but, in ambiguity: the fundamental human condition. There's a story inside each and every condo or apartment – each story is intriguing or impotent, and holistic or horrifying as the next. But, every resident, from these urban cribs is bound by their urban proviso. They appear to leave their psychological scripts behind, and pour into the urban setting with their game-faces on to briskly and deftly execute their social and professional contracts. Do their psychological conditions taint their movement, of course, but once in this setting, they are absorbed into a collective state. In this collective state, they become a blur, that obscures and obfuscates their psychological state. They ferret around frantically and furtively, becoming streaks of colors in mere impressions. It's these impressions that quilt a larger picture. Detachment and distance is essential to see this. I was astonished at first, then understood the significance of this phenomenon, at how our transient urban state is imbued with so much exotic and esoteric textural beauty – that is almost cryptic, osmotic, inimitable, and kinetic, almost inscrutable, unless we develop that mindfulness, through the faculty of deep perception, sensitivity and intuition. Most of us convulse around in this textural sphere without noticing it, which is seeing unthinkingly. The urban setting is fecund with aesthetic variances, where beauty is fast, yet, laconic, latent, intriguing and intellectually engaging in all our movement. How can one still life, and expect it to represent our fundamental condition? Why should life be made still to fathom its beauty? It's like photographing a hummingbird on a branch, instead of photographing the shimmering vibrations of its body while it hovers sensually over the opening of a flower! How should we depict the very existential essence of the hummingbird? With a still life shot? Ambiguity is itself an infinite canvas, like those colorfully nuanced vertical-horizontal abstracts by James Rosenquist, or the layered convulsions by Robert Rauschenberg. Each line or stroke represents an activity, and the aggregate of all these strokes: our movements, becomes an impression of a puzzle. And, when our movements become impressionistic, we need to pull back and look at the whole picture, moving back or away from a large painting to register its wholeness. The analogy of the sky also explains the layered beauty in ambiguity. The sky, invariably, is a new painting every second, it means that there will be over 86,000 paintings in a day, similarly, ambiguity, with no limitation what so ever, also yields thousands of Rosenquists and Rauschenbergs every day, at just one location, let alone all over the city! If we assume that still life aesthetic as classical painting in the canon of Caravaggio, Velazquez or Jacques David, then, what I am proposing would be akin to abstract expressionism, with modern masters like Rauschenberg and Rosenquist. Are there any Leo Castellis for photography out there, please? The objective is to capture the nuanced arbitrariness of urban existence, like a work of art. I want to bring photography to another
aesthetic plane, another state of expression, from being merely a recording mechanism, a literal art form, relying on technique, equipment and software, to an abstract art form, using the most rudimentary equipment, without any post shoot image manipulation. Photography happens to be the only field where the simple act of good observation would constitute creation. Seeing is actually creating! Ninety percent of the tools for photography are within our mind, in how we observe and perceive, ten percent for location and hardware. Total control, requisite for documentation or recording, can become toxic in the pursuit of art, something abstract – at least to me, photographic predictability is aesthetic platitude. I discovered that very basic equipment, concordant with our range of sight and depth, is efficacious in the pursuit of the said aesthetic. This exercise raises the individual's contemplative and intuitive process there and then, rather than some manipulation at the studio. It's exactly like writing with a fountain pen. Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel Prize winner for literature, still uses a fountain pen to craft his literary masterpieces. He claims, that it slows the process enough, enabling subtlety and sensibility in his narratives. In photographic parlance, George Davison used a cardboard box with 3/16” hole to capture his iconic rural setting “The onion Field” in the late 19th century, and Bresson shot the “Puddle Jumper” with a rangefinder. Vision, before equipment. In this evolving aesthetic, I am aiming to not only address the physical aspects, but more so our state of mind in our urban canyons. This type of resonant and concordant photographic typology is like literary verisimilitude, an impression of our urban existence, its illusion of logic and transparency, where we are all Bildungsroman characters, without the dissonant and contradicting clarity of the stillness aesthetic. I have practiced imperfection, the Zen asymmetry by photographing the same people at the same time and spot every day, from the same angle, and no photograph has ever registered or resulted in a remotely identical condition, even in the minutest nuance. Exactly as in nature! How infinite is the possibility of aesthetic variance, in ambiguity! The conclusion: Our urban condition is also the repository of binary, paradoxical and confusing beauty: symmetry hiding within asymmetry, mathematical precision enhanced by arbitrariness, opacity as the illusion of transparency, softness disguised as toughness, and the vertical and horizontal scales intersecting to weave our agenda, therefore, our condition. Ambiguity's aesthetic, intrinsic to our urban existence, can never originate or be cheated into existence in a studio, nor can it be staged or crafted, but rather, it is accidental, incidental and serendipitous, as our lives are. We are not conscious of it, like the sky or the bubbles over milk. It would be remiss of us: the discriminating photographic aesthetes, if we cannot recognize that ambiguity is our dopamine, and beauty being the mitochondrion for ambiguity: which, happens to be the mother lode of aesthetic profusion. Ambiguity is an unfathomable gift, to the two components of this existential equation: the urban dweller as the viewer, and the photographer. Note: Twenty B&W photographs from Raju Peddada's portfolio will be made available for publication. Photographs and textthesis: Copyright © Raju Peddada, 2014-2017. All rights reserved.