Photolalia
June 01, 2004
Obsessologia
My photography is mostly driven by little obsessions with particular themes or things -- the abstract shapes of domestic items, for example, or the found surrealisms of everyday life. If I had a single obsession it'd be the monomaniacally egotistical urge to show people how strange the familiar is, how much everyday life involves the surreal, how odd the little banalities of life can be. But mostly I do it because the world Out There is stranger than fiction, and I've got a burning desire to show this to people (Yes, I know, it's the old middle-class-white-boy-bourgeois-naif-hits-brutal-reality-and-treats-it-as-an-aesthetic-experience syndrome, but it's worked so far). And besides, photography provides the sort of instant gratification that writing doesn't. And it's a hell of a lot easier than either music or painting.
My photography is mostly driven by little obsessions with particular themes or things -- the abstract shapes of domestic items, for example, or the found surrealisms of everyday life. If I had a single obsession it'd be the monomaniacally egotistical urge to show people how strange the familiar is, how much everyday life involves the surreal, how odd the little banalities of life can be. But mostly I do it because the world Out There is stranger than fiction, and I've got a burning desire to show this to people (Yes, I know, it's the old middle-class-white-boy-bourgeois-naif-hits-brutal-reality-and-treats-it-as-an-aesthetic-experience syndrome, but it's worked so far). And besides, photography provides the sort of instant gratification that writing doesn't. And it's a hell of a lot easier than either music or painting.
