Spotmatic Matrix

I've had my circa 1965 Asahi Pentax Spotmatic for nine years now. This crafty little machine has taken me places I had never expected to go. I call these places "delightful accidents". Taking photos with an SLR, with no automatic shutter or aperture priority setting, is an interesting ride. And to make things even more interesting, I never bothered to fix its lightmeter. All of these, of course, help make a picture perfect, but by no means are they requirements for a glorious photo. I am not a professional photographer, so I go with what works for me. My own version of technical tinkering is literally trial and error; I've mourned over so many ruined rolls of films--RIP all my underexposed film rolls.

These delightful accidents, however, is what keeps me going. And since little spotmatic here isn't getting any younger, more accidents are surfacing--caused by a faulty film advance (the "winder"), rewind knob, or some other mechanism. Bottomline, my little SLR is in trouble with its glory days fading slowly. But here's an example of when my film advance didn't work properly by exposing the same film twice. I know photographers use this technique a lot--but they normally plan the shots.


I don't usually base my paintings or drawings on my photographs. And if you look at my portfolio, you'll see why--there are barely any figurative pieces, or portraits from life. I tend to use images for collage purposes only. So my photographs are very separate from my paintings. They serve a different purpose for me, and exercise a different part of my creative instinct.
























Photography for me, is firstly about documenting; and secondly, about creating new meaning, or recycling reality--transforming it in the process. It's not just about taking a still shot, frozen in time, that represents a fixed reality. To me, the image is no longer of the real and is left open to interpretation. Even journalistic photography leaves much to the imagination and is subject to a variety of political/cultural interpretations. When I take a picture of an object that frames it outside of its original context, there is an abstraction that instantly changes my relationship to it. It's this alienation that can be haunting and magical. The image may be fixed in time and space, but the meaning it evokes can take you to another place.

Susan Sontag's writing on photography opens up a whole new world for understanding the photograph and has influenced my take on it. I also have to mention Guy Debord, a Marxist theorist and filmmaker, whose work has blown my mind (I can only take them in doses--heavy stuff really). A seminal work of his, The Society of the Spectacle is a must read. A little on the academic side, but quite satisfying and eye opening, if you have the stamina for it. Did I mention his work is what inspired the film The Matrix? Yep, badass.