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Visual communication and photographyÂ

Associations kill the creative vision. We have grown with a terrible burden of associations. Let them go - anything is photographable.

The image comes to us in a variety of methods:

1. Form (Abstraction) - Music is the purest form of form. No words, no DIRECT associations, just music.
2. Form and representational material - Most people associate photography with this… this is the ‘thing’ in the photograph, the thing is what is important.
3. Form, representational material, and symbol - The communication when you ask, “What was the photographer trying to say?” Not overt communication, but there’s something in there that you respond to.
4. Form and symbol - The symbol is derived directly from the form, without the view identifying [with] the image.

Formalism - main preoccupation with the form. Images are clean, empty of representation, usually direct.

Keep up the rhythm of photography, always. Never stop. Photography is not inbetween.

There are two ways to see the world:

1. Objective.
2. Subjective.

Objective (surface vision) - consciousness
Objective (stoical) - ego-centric
Objective (apollosian) - gestalt controlled

Subjective (depth vision) - unconscious
Subjective (sensual) - not controlled
Subjective (Dionysian) - gestalt-free
Gestalt laws:the way we organize space

1. Simularity - alikeness of objects
2. Proximity - nearness of objects
3. Continuity - indication of a progression or pattern
4. Closure - natural tendency to complete a figure

Sign function:
viewer –> sign –> object

Symbol function
viewer –> symbol –> concept –> object

It is more work for the viewer to pursue the symbol in the photograph, and most won’t. But it is the pursuit of the concept that rewards with meaning.

                            Closed gestalt

Creator –>  –>  –>  –>  –>  –>  –>  –> Viewer
|                                          ^
|                                          |
|  _    _    _    ___Open gestalt__    _   |
|_| |__| |__| |__|                 |__| |__|

(indirect method; uses symbols, subtext and multiple meanings)

If you do, honestly, and believe what you are doing, you can not fail. Others may not understand what you do - problem, yes, but one that can be resolved. But if you pursue truth, all will be good.

Michael Degtjarwesky (d. 1996) Russian art photography educator and large format landscape photographer.