I came across an article in FORBES by Jonathan Keats describing the work and outlook of photographer Joel Sternfeld, best known for his pioneering color photography back in the 70's:
Sternfeld recognizes the passive-aggressive coerciveness of pictures, and enlists their manipulative power. “You take 35 degrees out of 360 degrees and call it a photo," Sternfeld observes. "No individual photo explains anything. That’s what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium.”
Yet… we remain all too confident about our unmediated vision, which is also inherently selective, limited by when and where we’re looking. Sternfeld’s pictures remind us that, like a camera, our eyes are essentially passive. Like photography, observation is an act of authorship.
