A Word from the Photographer

My mother told me that to live as an artist, one needs to have an extraordinary amount of talent. And also that, because their mental life is so visual in nature, artists’ brains partly atrophy over time. So I became a neuroscientist.

She also said that I could do ANYTHING I set my mind to. Which I think, in retrospect, is a bit contradictory.

So with a mathematician mother and an inventor (and photographer) father, I became a Badass Scientist. Over time, I collected many patents under my name covering the drug discovery technology I created.

But, in secret and in my free time, I never stopped being an artist: pursuing photography, sculpture, painting, and (lately) woodworking. It was with delight that I heard my good friend Marinés, a renowned artist in her own right, tell me that I actually had enough talent to be a full time artist. So I turned into one. Although, in secret and in my free time, I still enjoy science.

What I did not expect was to have to explain myself. I was under the impression, perhaps misquoting Charlie (not my uncle; rather, Bukowski), that scientists make complex things simple and artists turn simple things complex. But never that they had to justify their choices.

Shall I write about my projects being a play over light’s electromagnetic and wave-particle properties and all the phenomena expected from it? Like how interference (remember the double-slit experiment?) will give you, with or without your intent or understanding, some cool Newton’s rings if you sandwich two negatives? Or explain my sky photos only show polarizing filter improvements when taking the sun’s rays at a 90ish-degree angle? Or explain that I do not worry too much about metamerism for my toned B&W silver halide prints?

Or, instead, should I drop my scientist hat and wear a post-post-modernist beanie and use sufficient anti-linear fragmentation and plenty of self-referential quotes? Should I indeed be unreliable, intertextual, unconventionally unconventional, choosing minute over grand narratives? And should I cynically question my cynicism and use “quotidian” at least three times in a paragraph (or more)? Or should I disjointedly talk about my cat here?

I think not. I am not good about following rules (or recipes). I even despise those who read a manual. Moreover, having grown up under a dictatorship in Argentina, I have little respect for authority. I would just say that my heart warms when light hits the right way, when lines (diagonals preferably) take us for a ride over an image, when the surprise of a silky middle tone gives us awe, when the unexpected reflection or the play of a shadowy contrast brings a smile, or when the unseen detail or other understated image brings a tiny bit of relief. I am a follower of Yūgen, a Japanese term capturing the art of embracing a melancholic and nostalgic sense of beauty best left to the suggestion and interpretation of the viewer’s soul.

I feel my brain ever expanding. And, in any case, I think my mother will approve. 

                                                      -Dani Brunner