Each photograph is the result of both an instant, and the entirety of myriad photographs I've seen. Every instantaneous judgment of color, brightness, composition, depth of field, is honed by influences from photos I've seen, or taken, learning from my own mistakes, my evolution of framing, and the meaning of what any given subject might indicate. Each is an image I consciously taken from countless possible landscapes.
During my residency, I collected stones from the sea, purposefully prioritizing intuition over will. Each was satisfying, in its color, shape, texture, and so on. They are good stones. However, even though I may be collecting stones from the same world I photograph images in, there is a big difference in the way I confront those two acts of choice.
My photos can never be returned. From where were they taken? How would one define their origin, and where could they be returned? And anyway, photos come with baggage: the world has standards, consensus, for what makes a good photograph.
When I exhibit my photographs I imagine that some of them may be shared in a way resonant with how I feel about them. Are these stones anything that would resonate with anyone? I selected the stones based on my intuition. Do they deserve to be exhibited? It's fair to say that when picking something out of the infinite world, in the case of a photograph it is primarily consciousness that is used, while in the case of a stone it is more sensation, and I thought I would present these two ways of picking something out here. I hope that photographs will be experienced as a presentation of consciousness, and stones as a presentation of sensation, or that they will be compared or experienced simultaneously.
Both involve chance, but in them I feel we also get a glimpse of inevitability.