I went back to your discussion and I think you’re referring to this:
“As photographers, we exist in a curious middle ground. We work with
the measurable realities of luminosity, contrast, colour, atmosphere,
and geometry, but respond to them through memory, imagination,
and emotion. The photograph is formed at the edge between those
realities: between what is physically present and what we recognise
within it.”
I believe I read somewhere that Alister has reduced the physical world that we perceive to these 5 criteria. I think it comes from a book he wrote. I’m not sure about there being 5 or if there are more or some should be substituted for some of them. But generally I agree that you react to the external world or the image itself internally. On the surface that seems pretty obvious. I think through repeated and careful observation you see more, you notice more, and the experience becomes richer. Looking at light hitting these silos fills you up. But as I stated earlier I am not doing it to discover anything or discovering anything about myself internally. He goes further to say:
“The landscape had offered me nothing deliberately, yet by paying attention I had
recognised something of myself within it. The outer landscape remained entirely its own, while the inner landscape had briefly become visible.”
I can’t relate to this. I am not looking at my inner landscape. In fact I’m not looking inward. I’m just letting the out come in.
But here is something interesting. Is something beautiful if you’re not looking at it? Does a sea shell have any inherent beauty? It must. Right? Another words can something be beautiful without the ‘inner landscape’. Edward Weston struggles with this in his Daybooks. His conclusion is that objects have a beautiful essence to them and that we photographers are not creating beauty or even revealing what we see but are uncovering its essence. He believed that most of the world never sees the essence of objects and it’s our task to reveal it. That’s what he meant by photographing ‘a rock that’s more than a rock’. I don’t think many people believe in ‘essence’ any more these days. But there is value in it in that the subject is the driver in the experience, not the viewer. The more neutral the viewer the more likely he will see the essence of the subject. Perhaps some day some neurophysiologist will run some tests on rats and sort all this out. But I hope that day never comes. The more science uncovers the less satisfying the experience.