An Evening Afield
Please join me August 3rd
Photography is in a weird place. A quick search reveals that over 40 billion photos (and videos) have been posted to Instagram. Add in whatever is out there on Facebook, Vero, and the internet at large and the number might be too big for my D+ stats grade in undergrad to count. There are, without a doubt, more people taking photos today than ever in the history of the world. So, why is this weird? That sounds good? Sort of.
At times I feel like we’re just feeding the Matrix. I don’t mean this in some apocalyptic way, though maybe we’re getting there. I mean that photography itself, as a character, has entered the Matrix. You likely recall the main players in the classic movie series; Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus. They wanted out. They wanted something real, even if it meant less luxury, less safety, and a complete breakdown of their worldview. But not all characters felt the same way. Cipher, originally part of the crew of the real-world ship, Nebuchadnezzar, strikes a deal with the machines to remain in the Matrix with all the trappings of earthly glory, fame, and wealth.
Sounds a bit like a photo who can get a million likes.
If you are a photo floating around there on Instagram, or on the front of some big commercial website, people see you. They like you. They share you. It probably feels pretty good. Considering we’re all plugged in enough to at least get this substack entry, it’s easy to empathize with the perspective of the photos we share. Maybe the likes and shares are actually for us? Or maybe they’re for the Matrix.
The thing about life on Instagram, life in the Matrix, is that the emotions can bridge the digital and the material world. Things, insofar as they are things at all, like love and sorrow, beauty and dread, can move between places. They can take the form of 0s and 1s or they can be expressed in our faces, our bodies, our lives. But there’s more than just the Cloud and the clouds. The real world is to the digital world what the spiritual world is to the real world. I can’t take all my cameras with me when I die, and I can’t bring all my Instagram photos into the real world. They’re just data, 0s and 1s. If my account disappears, so do my photos. But the impact my photos had, the feelings and emotions they generated in me and others, remains. These experiences slip through the semi-permeable membrane of our lives (that’s from a B+ biology student).
Not everything can move between the digital, the real, and spiritual quite like love, beauty, sorrow, and awe. But art can. Photos can. Photos can choose to wake up, they can leave the Matrix. Photos can be printed. Photos can be framed. Photos can be seen and experienced and felt in a way a digital image can’t. Some photos even become iconic. Someday, when the Cloud rains down data in another great Flood, all we will have left are the things that woke up, the art we chose to bring into the real world. Fine art photography is a bit like the ship Nebuchadnezzar, we can use it to access different levels of the universe, broadcast to places beyond our normal experience. Photos might be characters, but art is our Nebuchadnezzar, art is our ark. This time, nobody has to build it alone.
Despite the digital nature of photography, none of my images started out as data. They weren’t born in the Matrix. Photos are born in light. Each image is incarnated in a specific moment, crafted from the material and spiritual. Each photo was revealed in the field, in the wilds, not on some LCD screen. Just as characters in the Matrix saw their residual self image as the best, most badass version of themselves, my photos might be in for a wake-up call when they’re hung up on the wall, in the real world. But somehow I know that once they meet the rest of the crew, once they see all of you, they’ll want to stay. You may even want to bring them home. On the evening of August 3rd, from 5:00-8:00pm at the M Italian Event Center in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, I am waking up my photos from the Matrix. I am printing them, framing them, and opening their minds to the real world. But it’s not just me doing the work, I’m not the only one there. We are made for community. So are photographs. So is art.
Please join me for An Evening Afield.
The M Italian Event Center can be found at 22 W Orange Street in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.
Please RSVP via my email kendrick@dkendrickc.com or via my cell phone. Complimentary appetizers and a cash bar will be available, and guests are welcome and encouraged to order off the available dinner menu at their own cost. Delivery and shipping available for collectors.