" A photograph can be viewed on several levels. To begin with, it is a physical object, a print. On this print is an image, an illusion of a window on to the world. It is on this level that we usually read a picture and discover its content … Embedded in this level is another that contains signals to our mind’s perceptual apparatus. It gives ‘Spin’ to what the image depicts and how it is organized. "
The nature of Photographs. Stephen Shore
Prior to last year when I moved to Ghent, Belgium, my encounter with photographs of my favorite photographers was channeled through the internet, books, and the magazines that were available in my country, not with the original artist's presentation. Similar to the way you are seeing the picture of Jeff Wall in the booklet below. Therefore, the way I saw those works was never the way the artists themselves intended to present their works. The representative nature of the photographic medium convinced me that I could consider myself an audience of those works, despite not seeing the original artists' version. to me, the photographic medium delivered the experience of observation without presence. The dimension, technicality, and materiality of the photograph’s original presentation, even the intention of the artist to turn their photographs into a limited number of unique objects, was barely relevant in process of relating to the artwork.
My first encounter with the original prints of the contemporary photographers in Europe was a shocking moment of doubting my previous knowledge and perception of every photograph I ever saw. To a point where I was suspecting that everything I ever thought I have seen, was just a misunderstanding and didn’t relate to the original work.
However, getting out of the shock of that encounter, I started to rethink my relation to those photographs. The misunderstandings may still be there, but they bring me to question to what level not seeing the original presentation can affect perception. To what extent does the original presentation matter, what qualities led me to connect to these photographs, and if those qualities are necessarily related to, for instance, how big the presentation lightboxes are? I wonder if those qualities are within the depictive level of the photograph which can travel without the presence of the physicality of the original print, which the access to is very limited.
The experience presented in this show is the result of the struggle to find the relation of perception of contemporary photography to its presentation.
A Sudden Gust of Wind was a key to my first connection with the KASK School of arts, by finding out that there is a background of it being referenced by one of the teachers there. it is now referenced once more as my connection point of bringing up these thoughts.
