You Ain't Wrong
William Boling >

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Artist interview with photographer Stephen Shore by email


Stephen Shore: Let's get started.

There are many sites with photographs on the web, not least Flickr. What attracted you to the images on eBay?

William Boling: Thanks Stephen.

There are several attractions to online auction pictures for me. Here are three.

These pictures just get to me. There is a kind of brutal honesty to auction pictures that is refreshing. The thing photographed and its context is usually presented artlessly and without pretention. The picture begins its life with a certain purity of intent. The picture taker is primarily motivated to allow the viewer to 'see clearly'  the item offered for sell. There is a force in that stance that is not present in a lot of the Flickr and other web pictures where the image maker may be "going for art". This artless stance also leads to picturing subjects and aspects of subjects, e.g. the back of a refrigerator, that  would not be photographed, but for the intended sell.  So we are treated to new visions of familar things and sometimes visions of  'utterly' novel things. For example one image I selected for the show from New Zealand's TradeMe site features a 20 teat feeding device (I prefered it to the 10 teat model as the holding bin was round and had a flying saucer feel to it - but I was happy to see a 10 teat model was available). Where else might I encounter a photograph of this object if not surfing TradeMe or eBay (nonesuch found on eBay thus far).

Another attraction is the sheer volume of pictures. It is an ever replenished ocean of images. There are over a billion transactions and pictures a year on eBay alone. Like gathering seashells along the beach, there's a satisfaction in finding that special picture of a pipe wrench that somehow stands apart. Sometimes the context renders the image surreal -- sometimes the object seems an avatar of its species. Just as with any picture the ways in which a picture may come to carry a lyrical punch are endless. And it should be pointed out that as with seashells one crosses hundreds of not so special shells -- so there is something akin to the thrill of the chase to the whole process. Looking for the thing that makes me say 'wow, look at that'.

Finally, it interests me that in the course of the history of photography we have reached a point where photographs, once treasured so that one's shoebox of photos was the one sure thing saved from fire or flood,  have become in this arena - evanescent - they cost nothing and mean nothing beyond the point of sell. They are pictures that exist as temporary pulse of energy and light organized by ones and zeroes. They are intended to endure only for the length of the auction. There is a poignancy to that which stands in relationship somehow with our current human condition.  There is a loss of corporality that echoes our 21st century world that seems less anchored -- more in flux. There is a throwness about them that seems in conversation with the sense I have sometimes of my own life. So there is a kind of satisfaction that comes from scooping out of the ether a few of these unintended treasures, destined to be short lived, and collecting them as an archive for further consideration.

Besides, its a lot of fun for not a lot of money!

Stephen Shore: Excellent points. Your first explanation about the purity of the attempt to see clearly is particularly meaningful to me. This seems to be a very sane reason for wanting to make a photograph. Taking them out of the context of the auction forces one to look at them in a fresh way. Perhaps some of their poetry comes from this same lack of context. Was this thought behind your decision to group them?

Wililam Boling: This is an interesting question. I grouped them as a convenience initially -- then got wrapped up in a gaming\playing way with putting together phrases or chords that I liked for one reason or another. I've held on to that approach instinctively but I think your point about the poetry of shifting context is apt.

Like the aural phrase "how now brown cow",  a visual phrase i.e. a tight grouping of pictures based on some structural relationship does sometimes heighten the capacity for the images individually and\or as a group, to become detached from their usual implications and thus to be absorbed by the viewer in a way that permits a sort of 'new seeing'. This sort of poetic response doesn't require any special sort of re-contextualization but it may help. Marcel Duchamp signed his famous proffer of a urinal become sculpture "R. Mutt" and he presented it in the context of an "art exhibition" -- these conceits force a 'new seeing' in a way that merely commenting to the guy next to you in the toilet that wall urinals have a highly sculptural quality that might be considered aesthetic, poetic or beautiful would likely never achieve. It also forces the viewer to engage in a kind of self-questioning in an effort to resolve the tension created by paradox of the re-contextualized object or picture. Thus grouping the auction pictures and printing them in a nice if basic way and holding them out in an art context all support the effort to see them anew. This is not unlike the careful way that a poet uses rhyme, meter, assonance and consonance and other tricks of the trade to provide fresh insights and experiences to tired words and tropes.

For "You Ain't Wrong" the pairing of New Zealand auction pictures and United States auction pictures may provoke an added layer of resonance along cultural and ethnocentric lines.

Stephen Shore: I'm coming up dry. I think you've said a lot about this project.

Wililam Boling: Thanks Stephen. That about does it.