Here is a comment left by one of my readers:
Simply put, even the most abstract ideas seem to crave a form of representation that can be experienced, whether in part of fully in the flesh. It sometimes avails to a severe knock in the head when we are anxious to put thought on to paper and yet struggle with the difficulties of translating abstraction to concrete things and vice
versa. Nothing new, but it reminds us of the profound reciprocity between the body and the mind, to the extent that denying the realm of the other is negating existence in itself.
Thus, while it is often thought that it is the 'flesh' that matters in the end, many designers are obsessed with image-making, with visions that sometimes seem to bear little resemblance to a finished product. Perhaps I will limit myself henceforth (in this argument) to the theme of veracity (although quite loosely), as this seems to be what bothers or touches most people when they see what I'd loosely call architectural photography.
It isn't really like that!
Well that's true. But then again, what is true about an image goes as far as the eye that sees it. No, I don't mean that people should use their creative licence to lie. From an architect's point of view, 'sometimes' what is in a photograph or in a sketch is what one wants to see. It is sometimes 'permissible', even laudable that one explores not just the truth of what one sees, but how one feels for it.
Architects see things others don't. There is as much
creativity in composing a photograph as there is in designing a building. While I acknowledge that there is much window dressing and touching up going out there in the industry there are also many ways of perceiving things beyond the faculties of the eye.
To put this in specific example, I am going to elaborate on a picture taken here as an example.
What did I see? You are most right in challenging the allegation that if architecture is about life, where are the people? But for many architects, the eye is already in a person who sees. None of my pictures are objective viewpoints. Like maps, they are biased in several directions because the creation of the image comes through a mind and body - a subject.
I wanted to explore a feeling of being detached from the world. The sisters in the convent would've looked out that window many times in their life and wondered about their vocation. Were they missing out? And yet the pews were aligned in a completely perpendicular direction. There were two movements that both stretched to eternity and the sisters would've felt the currents each time they stepped into either 'realms'.
The window shown here is in the chapel. It overlooks a field. Kids from the school would've played around each day.
Laughters of 'innocence' perhaps, or maybe a false facade, what with the looming towers of hedonism; one on Bukit Nanas and the other two at KLCC so clearly exposed in the background. The force of the world often seems to overpower anything else in its way.
So if you can exercise your imagination, you might perhaps find a sister kneeling on these pews, distressed and at peace each time she does so. Can you feel what she feels? The isolation of the world from her and vice
versa. The pain and the ecstasy wrought by merely kneeling on these pews. How her hands and feet might feel and how the ocassional breeze blowing in from the field takes her breath away as she reads the Book of Psalms. And how her fingers seem to feel much older than the year before, joined in prayer, but holding much pain from a world quite indifferent to words like sacrifice and service.
And the pews, never never complain...the world of piety rests on these objects, soaking in the tears, sweat and pain of those who ignore her. For though she is humble, a mere piece of wood, a little sacrament she is too, a pedestal to heaven, where sorrow might meet its rest.
Such dreams are not merely found in cameras Han. They also occur with a mere mild stroke of a pencil. This is why I still keep my drafting desk!
Hope this might prove useful to your deliberations.
Zhin,
Very interesting comment! Could you elaborate on what you mean by "architectural mood"?
When you say, "the eyes are already in the view," are you saying your photographs are as you would see it if you were physically present at the location?
If not, you'll have to explain that one too. If it's not too much trouble.
It should also be mentioned that if I am allowed to say shit like "brings immensity to the image" too often, I be strung-up for crimes against common sense.