Perception and Process in Photography

This collection of 16 essays is a highly personal provocative and cosmopolitan look at the process of conceptualizing and making photographic images today and the importance of cross-pollination with the creative processes of other forms of artistic expression in the visual and performing arts. As an artist who firmly believes in the importance of unrestricted sharing of information, techniques and processes, MacLeay’s objectives for this collection of essays are clear from the very first page: inciting constant questioning of the status quo, promoting the exploration of alternative conceptual frameworks in order to stimulate analysis, debate and innovative changes in the way we approach and define contemporary photography. The essays touch on a wide variety of themes that are best summarized by a quick look at the list of essay titles:

Beauty: The ultimate objective? An obstacle to progress? Irrelevant?

Black and White Photography: Reflections on tonal imperialism

Thoughts on the Difference Between Framing and Composing: An important, neglected distinction

Truth / Lie Duality: Looking into photography’s soul

Cross-Pollination in the Arts: Enriching the medium

Directional Scanning and Border Zone Considerations: Perception and spatial organization inside and outside the frame

Thoughts on Simultaneity and Layers: In search of the intangible

Analogue B&W or Monochromatic Digital: Does it matter?

Movement: Alternative perspectives

Conception / Realisation / Presentation: The traditional framework: exhibitions

Conception / Realisation / Presentation: Alternative frameworks: photobooks and the Web

Commitment, Coherence and CredibilitY: Personal oases, wind and undisguised truth(s)

The Curator: The blurring of roles

Grey and Grey: With a little black,…and perhaps some red?

Diptychs / Triptychs / Polyptychs: Multiple images - multiple perspectives

Interferences: The art of maintaining a state of disequilibrium

In his own words, “My ambition in bringing these essays together in book form was to make a contribution to filling what I perceived to be a gap in photographic literature in general. We have great philosophical works on the visual arts and photography by art historians, theorists, critics, semioticians and philosophers like Roland Barthes (La Chambre Claire) and Susan Sontag (On Photography); we have a veritable mountain of technical and descriptive photographic literature by a multitude of diverse authors writing in books and magazines worldwide, and yet, it seems to me there are few books designed to serve as practical guides for young photographers trying to escaping the what might be described as the tyranny of traditional photographic thinking. Taken together, these essays provide a critical look at the medium, my views on its strengths and weaknesses, where it has been, and were it might go. These essays do not constitute a textbook, although their objective is pedagogical in a very broad sense; my aim was simply to provoke thought about photographic traditions and conceptual frameworks and how they relate to those found in other forms of artistic expression. Their pedagogical value is not, therefore, to be found so much in the specificity of my personal arguments and reflections, as it is in the importance of what underlies their formulation: the development of a critical regard and questioning process capable of generating new perspectives on our work. The essays are simply an attempt to kick-start reflection about what we do and why we do it in the manner in which we do it among those young photographers who seek to extend their practical limits and the conceptual foundations that frame them.  

Photography is part of today’s contemporary art landscape. Although the fine art graduates of the best universities in cultural capitals around the world may be fully aware of the implications of this situation, there remain a significant number of young photographers who still approach the medium with ideas that are effectively more than a century old. Hopefully these essays will find their way into their hands, not because their approach is wrong, but simply because their approach should be a choice and not an “a priori” given.” 

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