The Vanishing Camera
(No, I promise you this has nothing to do with A.I.)
For my entire working life, and now in retirement, a camera or what it produces, has hung from, or clung to me, like ivy to the walls of Harvard Yard. For a time, that was okay by me. Especially being that my job as an art director or photo editor made me a participant in any number of campaigns, or at times, an active soldier in that army. But beginning with cell phones, a novelty, which at first, did no more for one than to aimlessly get one in touch with whomever one pleased at whatever hour they pleased and for any reason they wanted or no reason at all. But for me the romance was over before it settled in for a day. To me it was not a convenience, but by 2007, a device that made everyone a raconteur of every mundane moment of their incredibly ordinary lives, having no regard for loners such as me or anyone else who might be put off by their enthusiastic rudeness. But I knew I didn’t stand a chance, that I was bound to be the crazy old man committed to live out his life phoneless.
What I’m getting at is something I call fauxtography. Since I no longer have to produce photographs for something and/or someone else, I am taking my advice and taking advantage of those 99 gazillion existing images and reapplying them to original art made by me. To some extent I can do that for art’s sake because of a fellow named Richard Prince. That’s right the guy who blew up a Marlboro cigarette ad of a 1980s cowboy, put a frame around it, hung it up in the walls of some swanky gallery, and called it fine art, and got away with it . . . as he should have. And if the audience hated it, it didn’t matter. Actually, that was/is the point. It’s not ripping off its repurposing. So that’s me. From now on, I’m no longer a former art director or photo editor, but a repurposer making fauxtographs.
Finally, with tongue in cheek, I’d hope one would regard the work as one would a film starring Peter Sellers: A serious endeavor, or a genuine attempt at art, built with well-timed absurdities.
