“Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
Remy de Gourmont
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Photography is by its very nature, a crafty lie, told in the sincerest way possible. If we consider that it is a slice of reality as represented by someone who has edited the time, place, perspective and conditions in which this occurred, one comes away with the feeling that a photograph is entirely subjective and made to represent an impossible reality, since by its very nature it is a misrepresentation of that reality through filtering it in specific terms.
While this is true, the esoteric truth however is that photography is a view beyond the reality it pretends to represent. A crafty lie is in fact a grander truth in the paradoxical essence of our relationship with this ideal vision.
I have always said that photography is most closely related to sculpture than it is to painting. Every chisel mark, every hit of the hammer and weathering of time is visible; every enduring experience is shown, illustrated and featured for all to see. Light wraps around the surface of the work, always changing it, always in motion and constantly forcing it to adapt to the environment, much like we do as we pass unaware through life.
Sculpture is a selectively chosen moment in time that depicts the most ideal version of the subject. Sculpture is a pure definition of beauty as the sculptor wants us to understand it; it is the artist’s imposed ideals that we see and appreciate as our own. Sculpture is the naked reality of endurance through time and space and we are left naked in its gaze, looking and being looked at all at once.
I have always had a devout adoration for sculpture that I have approached my work as a photographer from this starting point. I have considered the problem of photographic representation to be a great responsibility and the moral dilemma inherent in this responsibility is obvious. I believe that what you say as an artist must be warranted, must have value and must refer directly to the paradoxes of representing a selected moment, perspective and light to depict a grander sense of your subject, one that transcends the limit of the immediate, static view.
As sculpture is the ideal representation of the subject, so too is photography. It is from this starting point that my work finds meaning for me, especially through portraiture, as I hope it finds meaning for the viewer. While I am working, I want my subjects to speak to me, to tell me their stories, without words, without actions; by simply being there, quietly; gazing back at me and the viewer with the depth of their being, not the surface of their reflection through my lens. I am in constant search as I work, of the moment when the viewer and the viewed become accomplices in the paradox of their relationship through my representation.
The ideal relationship between subject and viewer is when the viewer identifies with the subject, seeing both the frailty and enduring timelessness in that relationship; appreciating the similarities they share more then the differences between them. I am in constant search of the moment when the physical relationship of my subject and the viewer becomes blurred and unnoticeable and I hope it is clear in my work that though I am working in a purely physical realm, my intent is to transcend that physicality in favour of the more timeless qualities of the esoteric convergence through unity of the experiential relationship and physical proximity with the work.
I did my studies in photography before the digital revolution changed the art forever. I was trained to be a good technician. I have learned however, that being technically perfect, often detracts from the overall message that the work is conveying. I believe that like us mere mortals, photographs have a life of their own and the most enduring images bare the signature errors and faults of the creator. What is important to me is less the technical aspect than the message of resonance I am able to establish between my viewer and the work. I much prefer to know that the viewer has connected with the work on a personal level and has seen beauty in the ideal representation of the limited reality I am presenting.
Though I don’t expect the viewer to be aware of it, I hope my work is a testament to the finite mortality of our being as it is the timelessness of presence; of ideal beauty through the hard, unfiltered, though highly selective reality; of the ideal perspective through the real representation.
I hope that my viewer will come away from the work with an unconscious questioning of their own mortality and resilience; with a feeling that contradictions are not illogical and that our perceptions of beauty are limited to our experience and most importantly that they can change, adapt and evolve as we evolve continuously.
I hope more than anything, that the viewer sees a bit of themselves in the work and that the relationship between the subject and the viewer is one of likeness.
Spiro Polichronopoulos
March 19, 2015,
Just south of Ottawa, Ontario
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Photos: © SPIRO / Photographer
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