Photography. Pictures of overseas holidays in exotic locations, or just photos of a birthday party; old photos from when you were younger and still kept them in massive albums to flick through page by page and remember that day when… Now of course you keep them all on some digital storage device, each captured memory able to be relived at some later date—granted you can find it again in the immense conglomeration of data.
However as you press the button, a question begs to be asked: are you simply recording sections of your life, an ‘account’ of optical transactions? Or are you creating something new with each click of the shutter, forging a memory to be treasured forever? The photographs of Andy Goldsworthy, Mike Frakes and Andrew Pearce each demonstrate a differing methodology which the casual ‘documenter’ should be aware of when preserving each scene.
As a near perfect recreation of a scene, photography appears to lend itself to factual ‘accounting’, recording of events. Indeed many artists find it to be an indispensable tool for documenting and distributing their works, especially when the original works are highly ephemeral pieces. Andy Goldsworthy, whose works can ‘last for days or a few seconds’,1 records his delicate and transient sculptures using such technology. This enables him to display his pieces to those who are not there at the time of their creation and swift destruction; the aging of more permanent works is also perfectly documented as exposure to the elements alters their form. For Goldsworthy, photography acts as the ‘title deeds … to prove that [he is] the proprietor’,2 in much the same way one would photograph themselves at Uluru to... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Mike Frakes, Snow Monkeys, from the exhibition 'Like Us'. Image courtesy of the artist.
Andrew Pearce, A Silent Town, 2011. Type C Photograph. Model Brooke Findley. Image courtesy of the artist.
