Alex Mason Photography

        The best way to describe any of the pictures I’ve liked taking would be untraditional. I don’t like staging things, which in a photography class can be a problem. I think it’s incredibly dull to tell someone to sit somewhere and have them pose for a picture, rather than take a picture and let the picture describe itself. I see taking pictures almost like writing this very artist statement, You may read this and think everything I’m saying is dumb and makes no sense, just like you can look at any picture I’ve ever taken and say it’s dumb and makes no sense. Because just like when you write something, when you take a picture, what you hope to communicate doesn’t matter, it’s about what the viewer interprets from what they’ve seen. There’s no such thing as bad art because what you see as bad art I could see as great art. I think trying to describe my pictures through an artist statement would be rather stupid, being that first of all, there is no way to describe the pictures I take, they’re usually just pictures of stupid stuff like my cat or something. But when I take a picture, it makes me feel like I’ve captured something that I can interpret in my own way, and so can everybody else that sees it. So as far as an artist statement, there’s nothing to say, look at the pictures and read those, not words about how I interpret what I capture. If I wanted to tell somebody what the pictures I take mean to me, I wouldn’t take the pictures. I’d just tell the person how I’m feeling.

 

    Basically, the main gist of all the rambling is that I can’t stage a picture and be content with it because then it’s not real, like emotions, there’s a difference between actually feeling happy and just acting happy, when you stage a picture and tell someone to say cheese and smile, you can get them to act happy but when your pictures are circumstancial, you can capture real happiness. Also, If I were to write an artist statement telling you what every picture I’ve ever taken meant, It would only take the meaning away from the photo. My photo’s mean whatever the viewer interprets them as, whether it’s garbage or gold.