Absurdity & Understanding

August 5th, 2009

Pondering my love of the absurd lately. Nothing delights me more than intelligent (or even quasi-intelligent) nonsense. I love a puzzle that can’t be solved, a random delightful quirk to tease my brain. I like it in language, I like it in imagery and I like it in people.

I don’t think things should be easy to understand. If they’re easy to understand, they bore me. Sometimes I like things dark and obscure, and sometimes I like things that are just plain bizarre.

An image from one of my favorite photographers, then and now, Jerry Uelsmann. Of course he was and is the master of darkroom technique, unlike my rebellious know-it-all self.

An image from one of my favorite photographers, then and now, Jerry Uelsmann. (http://www.uelsmann.net) Of course he was and is the master of darkroom technique, unlike my rebellious know-it-all self.

When I was a photography major, I remember being very adamantly opposed to using proper darkroom techniques. I had my own grand 19 year-old’s artistic vision, and it did definitely not include 359,000 Ansel Adams shades of gray. At yet another critique my professor said she enjoyed my work, but it wasn’t showing technical competence, since she wanted to see that I could produce something that didn’t look like a Xerox copy. I was arguing with her that I had no interest in photographing mountains and trees and other bullshit and then reproducing them in perfect grayscale. I remember so disinctly the “Aha!” moment that followed what she said to me next.

“When you use proper darkroom technique and have images with a full range of white, black and gray, what you are saying to your viewer is that the world you are presenting to them is an understandable place.”

I couldn’t believe our level of disconnect when I replied to her “But, what if that’s not what I am trying to say?”

Why would I ever say that? Why would I even make that representation, in my art, in my writing, or anywhere else?

I don’t believe that for one minute, that the world is an understandable place. There’s no bigger lie than cleaning things up to present to people as some sort of reassurance that they’re meaningful and simple and can be fathomed. I firmly believe that the world is complex and strange, and the more whimsical things there are in it to confound and delight me, the better. I don’t want simple. I don’t want easily understood. I want the absurd and will be satisfied with nothing less.

Anyway, I’ve written a rather absurd thing that will be up at The Grand Conspiracy tomorrow, and I hope that you enjoy the nonsense with me when you read it.