| Ian Painter - photographs |
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I am interested in the transformation that occurs when practicing visual mindfulness - observing without judgment and observing while minding the internal process and thoughts of seeing. My photography consists of self imposed exercises in mindfulness.
'Composite Trees' is the result of an exercise in observing what something looks like from all viewpoints, forcing myself to be mindful of the role of viewpoint in photography by consciously rejecting attempts to choose an ideal viewpoint. Each image is created by layering multiple photographs of a tree taken from approximately equally spaced points on a circle around the tree. All possible viewpoints of the tree are contained in the resulting image, effectively removing the role of viewpoint. The trees I have chosen to photograph this way are non-distinct; at first glance they look like any other tree in the forests that they inhabit. However the process separates out the tree from the containing forest, and for me the result is a metaphor for the transformation that can result from practicing mindfulness. 'Fallen Trees' is an exercise in being mindful of what I see by not photographing what I see. Instead of trying to capture an image of what I see when I am in nature, I am strictly limiting what I allow myself to photograph to a narrow intersection of subject (fallen trees) and composition (centered, looking down), and forcing myself to observe everything else without use of a camera. The goal in taking this series was to make myself more mindful of both of these processes of choice and manipulation (of viewpoint, composition and subject). Restricting the subject and composition that I use removes a substantial part of the manipulation that goes into making a photograph, and instead focuses on the role of collection - explicitly acknowledging that much of nature photography is mainly an exercise in collecting images. |