Harold Davis's Blog, page 212

Down with irony

In a recent excellent and thought provoking online New York Times opinion piece Christine Wampler suggests that “irony is the ethos of our age.” Wampler identifies advertising, politics, fashion and television as categories “of contemporary reality [that] exhibit this will to irony.”

Red Tulips © Harold Davis

“To live ironically is to hide in public,” Wampler notes. She continues: “How did this happen? It stems in part from the belief…that everything has already been done.” To be ironical stems to some extent from an aversion  to risk. If you make it clear preemptively that you are not taking something seriously, then you cannot be burnt too badly if it doesn’t fly. But as Wampler opines, “Will we be satisfied to leave an archive filled with video clips of people doing stupid things? Is an ironic legacy even a legacy at all?”

One cultural area that Wampler does not mention is the art world, a world that I interact with—particularly in relationship to photography. And, yes, for many “high art” photography galleries if it isn’t ironical in a self-referential way (think Cindy Sherman), it isn’t art.

A little bit of satire or irony can be a good thing, but a lot of irony turns genuine feeling to dust. I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way. Digital technologies have opened an era in which ironic sensibilities can quickly proliferate (as Wampler notes), but these technologies have also given birth to new ways of approaching and creating art. Art that can be approached with the joy of creation, passion and pleasure in the thing itself. Like flowers, waves and surf with its endless ballet on the rocky shore. Down with irony!

Waves are wild and free

There are so many reasons that I love to photograph waves. Waves are wild and free. It is hard to predict what a wave is going to do next. A wave can express calmness and excitation simultaneously. The same wave can be both tranquil and violent. Waves are part of a giant pattern, but apart from that pattern: you never know when an individual wave will break in an unpredictable way.

Wave on the Marin Coast © Harold Davis—Click to view larger

Waves remind me of our lives. We are part of a great pattern roaring with the tide to a future that is unknown. Although part of the great pattern, like an individual wave each of us has our own pattern. We each respond in a unique way to the perturbations around us.

Day-to-day life can be predictable—with work commitments, school bus stops and all the little things of everyday life—and then wildly unpredictable, changed by exogenous events that might as well be the wind and tide.

Life is an adventure, sometimes gentle and calm, sometimes rushing with a roar of foam to crash against the shore. Whether in peak or trough, waves—and our lives—are always in motion. We can hope to enjoy the ride, but we can’t stop the waves or the passage and adventure of life itself.