Detuned
It is funny how sometimes the subconscious mind gathers information, thoughts and ideas, and ruminates, without you even being aware. Under the hood there is processing going on that you will never know about. Connections are being made, ideas are forming and whole new ways of thinking and perceiving are being built, ready to be born, fully formed, like children. Sometimes these children come into the world without any notice, and for no obvious reason. Suddenly you just think differently. Other times, there is a precipitating event.
Recently a photographer friend of mine send me a Christmas card. This beautiful little card featured a group of buildings silhouetted against the sky. A few steeples, that kind thing. The image was grainy and distorted like it had been shot through a dirty window. What was notable was that no part of this motif was in focus. The scene was completely blurred. It was beautiful. For me, this was a precipitating event.
For a few months prior to that I had been experimenting with some great little Voigtländer lenses for Fujifilm’s X-mount system. These manual focus lenses have a bit of a learning curve. The results were often, well, out of focus. But part of me was starting to be drawn to these images. There was beauty in these out of focus images. Especially when they had recognisable elements. I always enjoyed out of focus elements in images, but usually there was also an in focus element to balance things out. But, why not a completely out of focus image? Why were these ‘mistakes’ destined for the bin?
Around the same time I had been ‘reading‘ Hiroshi Sugimoto’s brilliant ‘Time Machine’. There is chapter on architecture and in this section there is a series of architectural images that Sugimoto shot at a focal length beyond infinity. The result is a series of images all of which are out of focus. Yet, these images are all recognisable iconic buildings and their form can be understood, despite being blurred. All the detail is just fluff really. The form of the building can be understood without any detail at all.
“... applying a focal length of twice infinity to these tombs reveals the soul of the building ... ”
There was something gestating in my subconscious, and this Christmas card caused it to crystallize, suddenly, I was no longer considering these out of focus images as mistakes. Suddenly I was actively pursuing these images. I was admiring these images in other people’s work, and I am even admiring my own. Although, to borrow a moniker from music, I prefer to think of such as images as being ‘detuned’ rather than ‘blurry’ or ‘out of focus’. Detuned, sounds a bit more deliberate. Less like a mistake. Anyway, I can feel a little project coming on. To my photographer friend: see what you made me do?
