The Screen of Our Awareness

For years I’ve been contemplating how we perceive the world, what constitutes perception, and what impedes or distorts our perception of what we see and experience. People’s impression of events differ remarkably from one another, and that’s causing some problems in societies. There’s a lot of back-and-forth finger-pointing yet I suspect we are missing the point. We tend to forget that the image or idea that we identify with is not outside of ourselves, but lives within us.

The eleventh-century Shaivite scripture, Pratyabhijna-hrdayam, states that we project our sensory experience onto the screen of our awareness, and that perhaps our screen is less than pristine. I like this idea, it implies personal responsibility for what we see and experience. I also like it because it reminds me of the way cameras function. The lens is focused on a scene and the image of that scene is projected onto the film or sensor. This happens within the camera, hidden form our view, and, as much as we might try to be neutral with the process, interpretation is unavoidable. We make choices that create the image.

In the mid to late 1980’s I was intensely exploring the properties and characteristics of large format photography. One of these explorations involved placing objects within the camera bellows to cast shadows and refract light onto the film. This disruption of the projected image is in many ways analogous to our experience of perception as distorted or embellished by memories, fears, desires, and aversions. The interface of the exterior scene with the hidden interior objects binds the external and internal into one image. The photograph is allegorical of the idea that what we perceive is overlaid and intertwined with the personal.

8x10 Color Polaroid, 1987

This photograph is of a woman standing in front of a fireplace, obscured by clock parts, a plant root, drawings, and a slinky toy. The chosen objects purposely lack a direct reference to the subject of the image, mirroring the way the fears and memories that influence our perception often lack a logical relationship to what we perceive. The arrangement of the interior objects in relation to the projected image, however, is carefully constructed, implying that although our associations may lack apparent logic, they nonetheless powerfully frame our perception.

Another example of this came about before dinner one evening. We were having chicken and I became fascinated with the raw skin, its translucency, texture, elasticity, and color. Instinctively I began to create a small sculptural arrangement, stretching the chicken skin onto some armature wire while holding it in place with paper clips. I then removed back of the 8x10 camera and secured the assemblage to the camera where the film back is normally found. The lens of the 8x10 camera focused on the underside of a clothing iron, projecting an image onto the chicken skin echoing its own texture. I photographed the construct with a 4x5 view camera on transparency film.

4x5 Color Transparency, 1988

With this image, what constitutes the photographic event—that is, the objects photographed, their physical relationship to each other within the frame, and the light that illuminates them—all takes place within the body of the camera. The stretched skin supplants the film and receives the projected image. The body of the camera itself is not shown, in order to de-emphasize the physical in favor of the metaphorical.

In its totality the image functions as a coded message, a configuration embodying the enigmatic relationship between the perceiver, that which is perceived, and the act of perception itself. The image is an aggregate symbol referencing the understanding that our perception of the world is a highly mediated affair.