Page 12 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 4 #2

The Hereford bull tightened his gaze high on dolf Arnheim, a 20th Century philosopher of the “Be quiet while I look. I can see for myself, you
my standpoint 30 yards across the field of dew- visual arts, was awe-struck by the magnificent have nothing to tell me?”
damp waist high grass. I held the keystone cognitive complexity of human visual thought.
position in the deployed arch of farmers con- We create a rich interpretive and experiential What to do? See the photographer as
verging on the trampled section of barbed wire imagery when seeing our world.
fence behind him. Sticks swung high and beat Our senses of sight, hearing and
low among a staccato fusillade of yips, whistles to some degree smell, reach
and hollers. He stilled his 2000-pound roan and across space and all our sens-
white frame on massive front shoulder pistons. es reach across time in a swirl-
His brow spanned the length of a man’s forearm ing mass of floating, diving
from elbow to knuckles. Steel weights curved his and erupting emotions some
horns downward in graceful framing arcs. The of which we describe as reality.
dark domes of his large unblinking eyes shielded [Fig 2]
his intent.
We see a photograph
We closed. He sprung large - still expres- then impulsively and some
sionless - an arch buster launched to full speed. times fiercely prosecute the
I pivoted for a right-angled sprint to safety – no belief that we are looking at
traction - the long grass coolly, fragrantly bathed a piece of reality: we cry foul
my face – last rights before a hoof through the should any alterations occur be-
spine; the neck mounted bludgeon dropped and fore during and after the shot.
raised leaving red soil beneath blue work shirt The contemporary critic, Bar-
and denim. bara Savedoff, identifies this
instinctive response as a grant
A rumbling through the roots: then still- of documentary authority to a
ness. He was grazing twenty yards outside the photograph. This grant places
arch. The long grass knew. She cloaked me an artistic burden on photogra-
from his passing view in sweet embrace and I phy: we listen immediately to
arose unbroken and bathed in life.
the painter working on canvas
The experience of seeing happens in the – “Here is my story; look here;
mind behind and beyond the eyes. The bull’ s have you thought of this?” Fre-
actions suggested his seeing experience was lim- quently the documentary au-
ited to the “merely visible.” What he saw created thority of photography excludes
a simple response to escape and then to resume the photographer as an intru-
his familiar infinitely repeating behaviors. Ru- sive rather than a creative force.
2

12 | Andy Walcott