9.14.2015

Is "visual note-taking" the same thing as photography?


sometimes I take images of things because I want to remember how the subject looked and how it was presented to me in real life. I want the visual note so I can incorporate it into the things that I write about. The images become reminders for me and at the same time they seem to me to be quixotic and serial segments of life in the real world. A concept in seeing the flow of modern life as it exists now. In the moment. In this instance. It will all change next week. Next year. Tomorrow. 
This will be a memory that provides a context when I think back about this particular period of time. 
It may not be relevant to anyone else. But should that matter?


2 comments:

amolitor said...

I actually start almost everything I do photographically with some note taking shots. I'm slow, I have to think things through, so I take some snaps of whatever it. I look at them from time to time, until some sort of an idea occurs to me.

This is why I could never be a professional. Crane trucks, you say? Hmm, yeah. Let me come out, take a few snaps. Then I'll get back to you.. some day. If I get a concept.

Fred said...

I see visual note taking as a personal practice. I sometimes make visual notes for myself as in a writer's notebook or artist's sketch book. I recently took some shots of the evening sky showing great colors in the clouds. I don't think they are great photos but they mean something to me and they may or may not be the seed of something in the future. If I snap the label of a bottle of wine at a restaurant with my cellphone that may be the equivalent of a grocery list. I don't think it matters although if Andy Warhol was working today he would take those "grocery lists", screen print them and exhibit them in a museum and sell them for gazillions. Oh oh, wait for the announcement of my new show :-).