Hockney: “My main argument was that a photograph could not be looked at for a long time…You can’t look at most photos for more than, say, thirty seconds. It has nothing to do with the subject matter.”

He goes on and on: “[P]hotography is all right if you don’t mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralyzed cyclops–for a split second.”

He almost perfect echoes your words when you say “…there’s no reason to linger. You can’t stand back and get a new view. You can’t lean-in close to examine the infiniteness of its detail. You’re not sharing its air. Everything’s perfectly sealed, at arm’s length.”

You can read the whole article in Weschler’s wonderful collection “Vermeer in Bosnia.”

On photo books, I’ve been impressed by the small-edition quality of two titles from jandlbooks.com; the Mike Slack book (an old fave) and the Gus Powell book (a new fave).

In other words doing a thought experiment, if somehow there were no digital photography and everything else were the same, I think we’d be singing the same sort of lament.

…edN

PS: on photo books — every spare penny is right, they are so very expensive. If you are a book addict, you have to put up with the small format, low production value editions which also militate against lingering and savouring.

I’m just concerned about this concept of “overlooking” and how more more more isn’t necessarily a win. There’s something cranky in what I’ve said — and it’s probably about my own resistance to the cultural shift being dictated by digital’s pace.

I like to look and linger. I like taking time with things (anything, really) and I like to think. I feel like I can do this better by looking at photography in books or on a wall; not on the Interweb. And I say this knowing the small part I play in increasing the digital glut.

I wonder if ‘film’ won’t be a saner, more interesting place once the dust settles?

…edN