I have always been fascinated by the television screen. I sit with my camera waiting for images to occur that when taken out of context generate countless scenarios never meant or considered by the script or advertisement writers. This is nothing new of course. Lee Friedlander in particular did a whole series of captures from the television in a 1960s series called ‘The Little Screens’ which show television screens propped up near radiators, or on dresser tops, or in motel rooms, anonymous spaces, as someone once wrote, “pairing disquieting glowing TV images with their mid-century surroundings.” He worked primarily with black and white film with a Leica 35 mm camera, and put his attention to the social landscape that included urban life as he encountered it: storefronts, shadows, reflections, rows of fences, bathrooms, doorways. Some of it is so fascinating: an eyeball filling the screen, face of a movie star, or another of a mirrored door along with a view of the bathroom and to one side a glowing television. I relate to his fascination.
As interesting, but really not to my taste, is Harry Gruyaert who found his inspiration with “the ubiquitous cathodic ray tube televisions” of the 1970s. He wanted to document the world as viewed from the living room, or as he suggested from popular daytime shows like Coronation Street or the BBC coverage of the Munich Olympis, or the Apollo flights.. His resulting images are bizarre distortions, weird colours. Gruyaert said. “It made me see the world in a different way and to question the ever-growing influence of television throughout the world.” Some regarded this work as a parody of current affairs, political figures, big sporting events, everyday life — the observation being that this was the way millions of people experienced the changing political and social changes all around them — through the television set. One might say we have evolved to an even more intimate way, now carrying that little box around with us in our hands every day. Our world seems ruled by it. It is literally an extension of us. His work with the television screen — weird and flashy colours, nearly abstract in their rendering — were first exhibited in 1974. He developed his style by manipulating an antenna and messing with the controls and suddenly he was being deluged with weird colours and shapes. As I say, not a great fan of it. But I could see his intention, and sometimes when I am slumped down over the iPad, I slip out the X-100v Fuji, switch to a favourite simulation, adjust the focus, and gently press the shutter. As Elliott Erwitt, the French-born American photographer says, “You can find pictures anywhere. It’s simply a matter of noticing things …”
This brings me to last night, sitting in front of my iPad and watching my grandson, 20-year-old Julien, skating with the Calgary Canucks in the AJHL, and hoping he is going to score, and indeed, he finally deflected the puck past the goalie in the first period. I watched the replay closely and took out my iphone and captured the moment. An aerial shot. I can read his #16, red and yellow jersey colours, and feel the way his body sails in toward the net, while four opposing players float into the weary pantomime like innocent bathers in the lake — and there’s the puck already tucked away at the corner of the ragged net like a sock in a drawer. It’s the movement, but when I blow up the photograph, combined with the grit of the iPad screen, the arena meshing, the orange glow of the lights overhead in the room, the muted colours on the ice, the blur effect, this is a painting. It is more real and vidid and glowing than the moment itself. It’s really like someone spinning a tale, layering upon it all their biases and impressions, and telling it over and over again, until it is far from the truth. Sure, it’s my grandson. Sure it’s the first of three goals he scored that night. But there is also a bigger picture. It’s a moment that defines a summer of unsparing discipline and fierce determination, and the sense that maybe instinctive rhythm will finally have its own way of making all of this more meaningful