Memory loss

Damon Schreiber from Toronto, Canada

Thanks to all for your kind comments. This photo is one of my favourites and it was gratifying to see responses like these. I'll tell you the story of how this came to be. Read on if you like.

A couple weeks ago, I went to a gallery where one photo on exhibit was a very large, very out of focus, but nevertheless very powerful image. This led to a discussion with my wife and another Japanese speaker about the word bokeh. And so I learned the second meaning of the word.

By coincidence, on the way home from the show, I took the above photo, though it was really just a straight shot of a tree. Later, I pondered a way to make a photo that would show both senses of bokeh. And then even later when I was completing this series of trees, I wanted to use the photo above as the third entry. But when I brought it into Photoshop, I was disappointed that it was after all, just a tree, and didn't really say anything more. So somewhere around there, inspiration struck as I experimented with layers, and I figured out how to make the image both in and out of focus at the same time.

There is a certain pressure on artists to explain their work in deliberate terms (e.g. "what I was attempting to accomplish"), but due credit must be given to serendipity, and that came into play here as what had been a tree turned into a brain, or memories, or whatever you like. Look at the picture and squint, then slowly open your eyes, and go back to squinting.

21 Nov 2006 2:45pm