Interesting how the filter of another language can immediately romanticize a phrase. For a photograph, I've discovered lens blur, light leaks from old Holgas, sepia, and a slew of other techniques all do something similar they tell a slightly altered truth of what the eye sees. Take a look at some of my favorite photos on flickr and you'll see what I mean and also what I have an interest in pursuing occasionally.
The photo above of Clematis taken in 2006 is what they call post digital processing, not caught by the camera lens which is something some photographers are puritanical about and I really don't know why because regardless of whether you do it by virtue of the lens or with your hands by dodging or burning in the dark room or by actively choosing a Lomo or Holga camera- its all still manipulation. In this case its photoshop and a lot of people think using a tool like photoshop is cheating. The truth is it can be, there are definitely scripts and software that can make your images holgaesque at a click of a button but thats certainly not how I like to do it. I like to do it just like I would do a watercolor, adding and subtracting the layers like washes, scrubbing away parts, intensifying others. The process is long and as laborious as a watercolor and just as satisfying.
I also add layers that render the image with scratches, waterstains, shadows and stir memories of other images. In a way thats what the ambition is- to render the feel of a memory. When I hear the word roses, I picture the juddering frames of a my dad's super eight cine camera movie of me and my sister in a rose garden as children. The bright colors are leached, the edges blackened, the image grainy, like the memory itself.
I like the idea and the power of beginning with an image that started out, not spectacularly and finding a new expression for it, like this one of Roses and Ferns or this one of A Tree in Autumn. Is it wrong to alter the mundane truth and tell beautiful lies? Je ne regrette rien.
