bill owens, and taking other people's photos

Last time I went to Bristol in March I went to see a Bill Owens exhibition at The Arnolfini.  (The Arnolfini played an occasional and rather arcane part in my childhood imagination, at the bottom of the docks, opposite the much friendlier looking Watershed, it housed films so art house they were a bit like stabbing your own eyes and equally esoteric, blink and you miss them art shows.  In fact I'm not certain it's changed that much, maybe I'm just more pretentious, but I like it better these days.)  Not having heard of him before, I was dragged in by my mum after coffee for a surprise treat. 

It would be disingenuous of me to say I wasn't sure if photos were allowed.  I'm almost certain they weren't,  But seeing as I didn't actually find out, here are a couple, and here's a link to the proper place to see them.  I didn't get any of the portraits - the gems like these. 

And then a few weeks ago I noticed how all sorts of things were infiltrating my own photos that weren't really my things.

Sometimes I'll do direct tributes on purpose, like this one to Anne's beach pictures (which to me are the beautiful photography equivalent of the little camera film pots of favourite beach sand I collected for years).

But it's not always conscious.  And I know everyone always talks about stealing ideas and all that (including me).  But I suppose I'm interested more in the visual blurring more than the conceptual one.  (If you can the two.)  Sometimes it's homage, sometimes unintentional but obvious, and most often it's probably something we don't notice at all because it's a more subtle kind of diffraction.  Looking at lots of pictures every day (as you do if you love Flickr as much as me) you must end up absorbing and learning and adapting even tiny parts of people's picture taking, without even thinking in a conscious way that I like or admire it.

Which feels nice and almost Darwinian in a magical kind of way. 

Comments

[Anne]

Glad you like the beaches. I don't feel so freaky now :) That's a lovely way of putting it all. I like the look of Bill Owens - must check him out.