Reality is subjective
It dawned on me, a few weeks ago. I had heard it before, I think, but it had never hit me so clearly. The questions and attempted answers which followed have kept me thinking since then, and I very much suspect that they will keep me occupied for a very long time to come.
We all know what reality is, or do we? In reality (no pun intended) it is very much not what we think it is. Or actually, it is what we think, not what it is. Reset for a moment. Let us think. In actual fact, we don’t know what is out there. We only know what we perceive as being out there. For all we know, the guy next to us might be perceiving something entirely different. The reality remains the same. The perception is subjective.
This is what makes everything so interesting – as a photographer, that is. While we are capturing the same reality, we know that what we see is not what others see, or at least, we don’t know what others see – we just know what we see (and even that is debatable). What results from this is an exciting barage of opportunity for interpretation. As artists using the medium of photography as an interpretative medium, it is our duty to ‘document’ reality as we see it, and present it to others to see, interpret and distort into whatever their own reality is. It very much feels like a machine which takes something, and through various stages of processing produces something totally different. We don’t know what will be produced, and since the last stage of processing is through the eyes of the viewer, the end result is always different. That is exciting.
So what do we make out of all this? What I personally think is that when viewed from this perspective, photography becomes a very powerful medium of interpretation. No wonder it was the medium of choice for many surrealists. If we look at the greatest artists, particularly from the last century, it is clear that they have all realised this, and spent their lifetime exploring the concept in their own way. The identification and development of this and other concepts is one of those things which I believe demarcate the distinction between a photographer and an artist.
By all means, this concept is nothing new. There just seem to be moments in a person’s life when certain things just become clear – those important moments of realisation, which help us evolve and better ourselves.
So that’s another tick on the list.
