We can consider the enigma of the body. ‘Nature is on the inside.’ said Cezanne. Starting from the paintbrush through the blood of the sitter and finally to the recognized form on canvas – something ‘visible’ is elevated to a second power. The drawing or the painting becomes an image that is not a mere copy of what I see. There is another relationship between the actual world and the imaginary in a painting.
I can refer to my ‘inner image’ of a painting in terms of imagination. This ‘inner image’ of the painting and consequently the imagination itself is distant from the actual world. It exists as a trace of the vision from the inside moving out – like clothes for the imagination.
At the same time the imaginary is very closely linked to the actual world because it is produced inside my body by visibility – from the outside moving to the inside. The inner gaze is like a third eye producing an imminence of a vision. Painting manifests this potential and progresses through exercising the hand. I come into contact with this vision more and more through the practice of painting.
[whohit]-Think in Painting_IV_EN-[/whohit]
Tony the same thing is true in photography although maybe not as easy to see. When I make a photograph it is always a combination of seeing something–some person, situation, gesture, relationship–and then bringing my camera up, looking through the rangefinder, and clarifying what needs to be in and out of the frame, how the lighting needs to be to capture just what I saw in the first place. There is this third eye, inner gaze, so that even photographs are created and not simply mirror images of external reality.
Glad I found your website. Looking forward to exploring all of it. My best to you and Laura.
I see your point Phillip. I used to room with a photographer when I attended Brooklyn College. My query to him was, “If you and I go out together with the same camera, moved by the same view, lift the camera to our eyes at the same moment and ‘click’, will there be a difference between your photo and mine?
I’m playing the devil’s advocate of course. I love photography: both doing and seeing it.
Thank you for this information; it’s quite helpful to me , especially reading it more than once.