3: f=a=r=t

I quickly became obsessed with words and images. It had been suggested in lectures
by Greg Lucas that photography is a terribly inefficient way to express something, as
compared with writing. I disagreed with this, as Kubrick said about 2001:
“I don't have the slightest doubt that to tell a story like this, you couldn't do it with
words. There are only 46 minutes of dialogue scenes in the film, and 113 of non‐
dialogue. There are certain areas of feeling and reality—or unreality or innermost
yearning, whatever you want to call it—which are notably inaccessible to words”
However my frustration with the photograph was peaked, and I realize now that we
cannot apply Kubrick’s idea of film to still photographs. This is why photographers
work in series. This is also why Duane Michals works with words. I think this was possibly my first attempt to reconcile words with images, and I was
happy that I could use this tool to contextualise an image exactly the way i wanted to.

This piece (entitled ‘in which I become verbose’ a throw to chapter titles in Winnie the Pooh, my favourite childhood book) is about exactly this attempt to constrain your audiences perception with words. And the following piece (entitled ‘the pig in the straw hat’) examines it’s failures.

"the problem is you see what you want to see/
the pig in the straw hat"