Deconstructed Tulip - A topic revisted.

[drg]

The question of Documentation vs. Imagination in photography has always been important to me. In thinking about the upcoming year of work, I began work on some techniques that resulted in something almost completely unrelated which led to some display and contest pieces. Three of these preliminary (very preliminary) pieces I've decided to share with the PR world and wouldn't you know, the first one posted got picked as featured photo in the Critique forum. That was certainly unexpected and I do appreciate, but I digress.

The first image, though its the only one of the three that currently exists in physical form, was very exploratory and narrow in its presentation.

The second one evolved rather quickly (not from "Hosta Intent") but from the original concept and I decided to play with the old topic of Documentation vs. Imagination or View vs. Picture as the Art historian/profs might put it.

This gives us something concrete to play with and discuss. My feelings won't be hurt one way or the other. Let me know what you think about either or both the image or topic, but certainly the point in this forum is the topic.

Here's the accompanying text to the photo to which I'm including the link to the other forum. The link is at the bottom of this posting.

DECONSTRUCTED TULIP

This is the second piece exploring the palette/spectrum theme via photography.

Botanical items were chosen for the shapes and colors they bring to a picture and that they are familiar to viewers. This is to minimize the distraction of the subject, in this case the tulip, from the whole work.

Deconstructed Tulip comments, either "tongue-in-cheek" or ironically, on Documentation vs. Imagination as a recurring issue in photography.

The argument surrounding "Is a photograph of another work of Art in itself Art? is spoken to by reversing the visual presentation and embedding the original work (the inset framed photograph) in the foreground as the model with the palette in the plane of the secondary work, the painting. The palette contains the component colors for the painting in the shape of the main blossom of the tulip along with some of the mixtures necessary to form the needed hues. Since the palette relates to both photo and painting it must lie partially outside of the observers view, ergo the frame cuts the palette board.

The identical frame for both the inset and whole work are to accent the derivative nature of one work from the other and by doing so asking where the intent of the work truly lives.

Some technical notes:

This is a preliminary, explorative work (as is "Hosta Intent") and has several technical issues including:

1. The positioning of each of the elements in overall frames.
2. The acutance or overall sharpening of the photograph.
3. The color correction and intensity levels of the photograph.
4. The crop of the tulip in the "painting".
5. The style of the framing and its perspective. The framed photo and the derivative work are intentionally presented in different ratios to further accentuate their difference.

This work currently exists only in the virtual (Photoshop, TIFF, and JPEG files) world and is continuing to grow and change.

-CD Price 2 February 2005.Deconstructed Tulip in Critique Forum