Wednesday 21 March 2012

Callanish: William Horwood

Certainly not a book about photography, or even a book in which photography has any meaningful part, but Callanish by William Horwood does contain this great passage (Minch and Creggan are caged eagles at London Zoo)

..a party of visitors began their walking stare along the Cages. They were laughing and talking and putting black square things to their faces, pointing them at the eagles, and clicking them.

“It’s a ritual”, Minch had once explained. “The visitors have been doing it as long as I can remember.”

“What’s it mean?” asked Creggan.

“Well, they find something to click at and when they’ve clicked at it they don’t look at it any more but move on and click at something else.”

This seems to be something that Sontag or Henry Bond would observe, and moving my photography beyond this simple harvesting of images was a primary driver for signing up with the OCA. Seems particularly resonant as Assignment 4 requires me to explain how I’d have done the assignment differently if I hadn’t had a clear brief.

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