When I first heard this prompt, I thought about the words 'see' and 'look.' They have similar meanings, but I decided that the word 'look' implies an active observation, while the word 'see' implies a more passive one. Having arrived at that conclusion, I was reminded of a section of an interview with the American photographer Garry Winogrand that speaks to the above prompt. The section reads as follows:
"Interviewer: Well, what is it about a photograph that makes it alive or dead?
Winogrand: How problematic it is! It's got to do with the contention between content and form. Invariably that's what's responsible for its energies, its tensions, its being interesting or not. There are photographs that function just to give you information. I never saw a pyramid, but I've seen photographs; I know what a pyramid or a sphinx looks like. There are pictures that do that, but they satisfy a different kind of interest. Most photographs are of life, what goes on in the world. And that's boring, generally. Life is banal, you know. Let's say that an artist deals with banality. I don't care what the discipline is.
I: And how do you find the mystery in the banal?
W: Well, that's what's interesting. There is a transformation, you see, when you just put four edges around it. That changes it. A new world is created."
When Winogrand says "Life is banal," in the recording of this interview, it's done so bluntly that it seems like an absurd statement, a joke. In the context of the interview, however, it takes on serious meaning. Winogrand implies that people have notions about the world, what it looks like and the way it is that are seldom called into question. In his photography, he is searching for images that will raise such questions instead of providing answers like the photographs of the pyramids do, that will confuse our ideas instead of clarifying them.
In this context, I think the prompt is a way to think about what a visual artist does. We are not content to passively see: in making, we look for images that can create new meaning that didn't exist before.
The link to the interview is below. The above excerpt begins at 15:20.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
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