FLIP EVERY ACE

Trust everyone, but cut the cards. ——-Irish Proverb

BY MICHAEL PERKINS

WHEN IT COMES TO OUTCOMES, MY PHOTOGRAPHY WALKS A KNIFE-EDGE between placing myself completely in the hands of fate and trying my damnedest to control everything. I can’t fully buy into either the philosophy that says, hey, whatever happens happens, just click the shutter, man or the belief that it’s only art once I’ve thoroughly messed with it. This cradle-rock between complete abandon and controlfreakdom creates a nexus where the real good stuff happens. I accept it.

I just don’t understand it, that’s all.

There are times when I just step up and shoot, instances in which I trust so much to chance or luck that I’m convinced that something good will happen, even if I’m not in charge of it. And there are other times when I truly try to exert my will, to whip the raw material into shape…somehow. In the moment that I make a picture, I rattle between these two poles but may not actually know that the process is happening. In reviewing old shots, however, I’m afforded the distance, even years later, to recall what the moment was like, that is, to suss out whether I was “what-the-helling” or consciously trying to massage something into happening. To, in effect, trust the dealer, but to still cut the cards.

To illustrate….

The last time I was on Liberty Island was mostly a day of taking “official” images. You know the ones. The contenders for the Sacred Postcard Tribunal, whoever they are. All the right angles and all the right lighting, as if you are working as a staff shooter for the Chamber of Commerce. And then there are the other shots, like the kind you can only get by, say, standing in front of the island’s visitor center (but the T-shirt!) and looking at Lady Liberty counter-intuitively, taking the shot nobody “wants”, as if she were walking away from you. What was I thinking? Was I thinking, or was I just swept up in the moment? I seem to recall that I was eager to try something, anything that smacked of a different approach. And so, if you had “he actually meant to do it” on your bingo card, get out your dauber.

Like I said, I accept this entire process.

But I’m damned if I understand it.