Function
I am becoming increasing fascinated with the ideas of functionality and photography. In this day and age of online galleries, flickr, and numerous other online photography groups I believe printing out a photograph and placing it on a wall to be a statement. It’s a statement of functionality. So much function can be added to photograph online. It can link, be linked to, travel around the blog-o-sphere, live a life of it’s own, etc. Yet when printed out and placed on a wall it loses all of that potential. I’m not saying that lack of functionality is harmful, but it is a statement.
To me there are two types of decisions made by a photographer when working on his/her photographs. One is logical decisions about the process. Two are conceptual choices made to enhance the message. The logical decision are partially defined by a what is the current working method. Today, it’s the use of a digital camera, worked in Photoshop and/or Lightroom, and the placed online. Even the film camera, scan, Photoshop, process can be considered the norm as well. So anything outside of these, I believe, constitutes a conceptual choice. Even printing the photograph and placing it on a wall.
Disclaimer: Like most ideas that pop into my head, I am probably late to the party on this idea. Nevertheless I thought I would share the theory.
Update: Another part of this is photography is a reduction of functionality in itself. Taking a reality and reducing it to a single point in time and space to a two-dimensional object.
