The Cup
FIGHTING THE PREDICTION MACHINE.
At its simplest expression a photograph is merely a record, the two-dimensional archive of a moment trapped by light and time. Unlike painters, photographers work in reality and in substance. The building blocks of our craft need to exist before we can exert control over them 1.
When we speak of a photographer’s so-called “eye”, I believe we’re identifying an ability to reframe that reality into something unexpected, something that may spark new associations within our brain, or force us to question the world around us. Sometimes the raw subject is enough on its own, but when I look back at the history of photography I’m forced to admit the depiction is what truly moves me. Whatever the subject. The true nature of an image exists in the interpretive impulse of the photographer—from the blurriness of Capa’s D-Day 2, to the banality of Stephen Shore’s American Surfaces or the unapologetic grittiness of Provoke magazine.
To get there, however, I think we need to break down the biases through which we perceive everything that surrounds us.
…
This, is a cup.
It’s not pretty or even interesting. But beyond its physicality, we know the object; we know its function and our brain is trained to immediately understand everything there is about it, on sight. We don’t question the cup. As a result, it’s likely we barely see it.
Of course, light is transformative and when we combine this with a few other technical choices—in this case a longer lens at f/4—we already introduce a different intent.
GFX 50S, ISO 6400 1/240s f/4 120mm (Acros R)
But what if we decide to forget what a cup IS altogether? What if it’s just an oddly shaped object we’ve never encountered before, and our task is to translate it into some kind of visual rendition?
When we forget function, several changes occur:
The object is no longer bound by a specific direction: there’s no up or down anymore.
The informational aspect of the object isn’t relevant: we don’t need to show the entire cup, simply because this is how we’re used to seeing it.
Along the same lines, the object is now an assemblage of curves and surfaces, period. The whole no longer matters. The canvas is blank.
The cup is no longer the point. It’s a pretext. It’s an amalgam, blending with shadows, revealing only fragments of itself.
I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now, but the concept here goes beyond shooting a cup. When we go out into the world, we step into the greatest amalgam of all: structures and objects, either natural or man-made; individuals blending into spaces or a vast emptiness broken by dissecting lines; reflections intersecting with what lies behind. We can choose to illustrate the obvious and follow what we already understand, or we can disrupt the status quo. And this doesn’t necessarily imply going overboard: just enough of a sideways glance to introduce a few questions. Just enough to shift our comprehension.
In a 2015 article entitled Visual anticipation biases conscious decision making but not bottom-up visual processing , researchers wrote the following:
An evolving view on the brain is that it can be seen as a prediction machine that optimizes its ability to predict states of the world and the self through the top-down propagation of predictions and the bottom-up presentation of prediction errors.
We propose that these results support the hypothesis that consciousness provides a time-delayed description of a task that is used to prospectively optimize real time control structures, rather than being engaged in the real-time control of behavior itself.
Most of that article, admittedly, is way over my pay grade. But from what I “think” I understand, it would mean our brain actively shapes our perceptions predictively (bias) but also uses those same predictions as a kind of baseline we can then build on. Essentially, that we can learn to overcome the prediction matrix.
There is no spoon.
And there is no cup.
————
Generally speaking of course. Experimental photography has been around forever.
In this case it’s an acceptance of randomness. Capa knew technical considerations were beyond secondary. That instinct to shoot, no matter what, became the interpretation.
