The first thing that occurred to me as I read Kelley Wilder’s text on photography and observation is that I know almost nothing about photography – I know little about the different types of photographic techniques that there are, nor do I know the history of photographic development, or their various scientific applications. I am unfamiliar with terms like “plates,” emulsions,” and “collodion,” and I have not given much consideration to the feedback loop between science and photography.
Reading Wilder’s text made me interested in understanding what set of skills the art of observation required before photography. She states that prior to photography, scientific observation required “an innate genius for concentration and attention to detail,” besides the development scientific observation skills (which are not described here).
I often aspire to be an attentive observer of my surroundings. I am interested changes and patterns within the environment, natural processes, and human behavior –but I feel like my observation skills are often a bit lazy and not rigorous enough to come to a meaningful insight, certainly not a scientific insight. I often capture and record without much intention, in fact, I feel as though many of the photos I take on my phone come from a feeling of compulsion. I feel a compulsion to record things and this compulsion is tinged with anxiety – perhaps related to the text’s introductory quote from John Gribbin, “Nothing is real unless it is observed.” There is some feeling that if a moment or an image or a thought is not captured in some way, it is lost and that we have no way of verifying that an event took place if there was no recording of it. (for more on this feeling see image of journal entry below).
I am interested in questioning how the affordances of my most used capture device (my iPhone) affects what I pay attention to and what I ignore in the situations I find myself in.
In some ways I wonder if photography, or photography as most of us perform it today has made our observations lazy. The text explains that one major advantage of photography over prior methods of recording observations was that “photography eliminated the aggravating need to momentarily take one’s eyes off the subject while jotting down notes or sketches.” I wonder though, what skills were perhaps lost when we started relying on photography for the images as opposed to using hand sketching and note taking? As recently as 2022, a new species of giant waterlily was discovered through detailed observation and illustration – the discovery of this new species, Victoria boliviana, was achieved in large part through the patient and rigorous observation work of Kew botanical illustrator Lucy Smith.
In your opinion, What is an artistic opportunity, made possible by methodological/scientific/scientistic approaches to imaging, that is interesting to you?
This article made me interested in how the scientific process for recording and developing images can create not only images but measurable datasets that when probed with certain questions reveal some phenomena about our world. For example, I found it fascinating that Raman plates, which are impossible for a layperson to read as a sort of image can be converted into measurements that can be used to capture information about material substances and structures. (I don’t have a complete understanding of how Raman spectroscopy works, but I am now very curious about it and intend to learn more). I think that overall, it is interesting to think about how a capturing tool (like the Raman plate and associated chemicals) can indeed be used to create an image—but that examining the relationship between the capturing tool, the environment, and the captured element can reveal a totally different ‘picture’.