11 June 2004
Hi there,
Ran across a comment by Hemingway, which I feel goes a long way towards telling you how I feel about what being a photographer means to me. Replace the word "write" with "photograph" in the following:
"I like it at a war. Every day and every night there is a strong possibility that you will get killed and not have to write. I have to write to be happy... But it is a hell of a disease to be born with. I like to do it. Which is even worse. That makes it from a disease into a vice. Then I want to do it better than anybody has ever done it which makes it into an obsession."
For better or worse, it means there´s no way out. Once you discover you are this far in and this is how you are, it´s too late - everything around you has already fallen apart. Relationships are distant memories, or faded nightmares, and possibilities doomed to failure...and there´s no concept of a retirement plan either. Balance is intrinsically not possible, at least in the conventional sense. You can only work harder and more intensely to stay one step ahead of madness.
Think I´m exaggerating? Well, put it this way: my grandfather would never talk about The War with anyone who hadn´t been there because he knew they would never be able to understand. Likewise, none of my friends, and only a few of my photographer buddies, really know what I´m doing or why.
Example: a very intelligent and dear woman friend recently said, "Dean, your photographs are so depressing...they make me sad. Please won´t you photograph something beautiful like sunsets or flowers?" (Yes Anne-Marie Davis - an echo of what you said several years ago!) And my Dad, who can´t understand why I don´t or won´t turn to commercially more viable stuff. To tell the truth, I wish I could - maybe I´m even capable of doing so but I don´t know if it would satisfy me. Despite that, I have resolved to try it someday - simply to see what happens...but I suspect I will think too much about it and they will inadvertantly end up sad anyway. See?...nothing you can do about it. It´s a trap.
Another example: I´m teaching in a big coal mining company near the Polish border. Hundreds of square (maybe cubic!) kilometres of earth torn apart by the biggest moveable machines in the world in order to feed the most voracious species on the planet...leaving vast wastelands in their wake. Now, guilt-ridden and quasi-repentant, they ("we") are pouring billions of euros in to "recultivate" the landscape. Mountains and deserts of dumped earth are moved, graded, stabilised, thumped and pumped and sculpted, then turned into forests or farmland. Deep pits kilometres across become lakes, and so on. The point is it´s all very nice and rosy...and at first glance the results are beautiful...but take a closer look and you can see where the surgeon´s knife has been, and you know that under that surface are heavy metals and poisons only locked in by the thick layers of clay, and the acid in the lake is only taken care of by the lime they pump into it for years afterwards. I started out photographing this landscape last year...initially with a sense of joy as I recalled the forests and beaches I grew up with in the land that everyone here in Germany seems to think is full of hobbits (thanks P. Jackson). This has gradually turned into a creepy feeling as I became more and more aware of the artificiality...and the motivation behind it - the whole thing - it´s very weird, and I don´t think I´m able to really tell you. You haven´t been there.
Ach, meine gute! travelling so much by train these weeks - back and forth to these mines - could say I´ve got too much time to think. What I really need is a cig and a sleep...
´night all,
Dean
(Shoulda written: 1. My 5 year retrospective show starts in 4 weeks...and I ain´t ready yet! 2. My brother Bruce is in Ypres, Belgium, filming WWI stuff for NZ TV, but I can´t get there to see him! 3. Experiments with film and method. 4. Something about Summer.)