This article focuses on the photographer Tom Bamberger. Bamberger seeks to finds “truth” in reality through his photography. The article explores Bramberger’s views in order to better understand the meanings of his work in hopes of becoming better and understanding photography or artists as a whole.
This article was written to investigate photographer Tom Bamberger’s view of the world in hopes that it will better help us understand the principles of photography and art making. Barmberger’s photography style is notable as he manipulates his photos in order to make them into seamless images. He does this by sample a small portion of his photo and repeating it infinitely. It is stated in the article how this process is similar to that of a bacterium multiplying itself in a culture. This comparison is relevant as Bamberger’s is frequently inspired by science, math and philosophy. his work is directly related to the studies of scientist Charles Darwin, his evolutionary theory in particular. According to the author, Bamberger recognizes no separation between the world of man-made creation and nature said to be created by God. It is through this perspective that he believes that science brings truth. However, in relating to the world of art, Bamberger finds himself questioning, “What is the truth in photography?” This question is what he confronts in his current body of work.
Babmerger’s fascination with photography was said to have started with him as as child on a camping trip to the Canadian Rockies. After taking a picture to commemorate the moment, he was later surprised to find that the resulting photo captured little of the moment he sought to re-live from his memory. It is this moment that he attributes to sparking his interesting in appropriately capture nature with his photography. Bamberger says, “If I would have thought ‘Oh, my God, that’s great!’ I never would have become a photographer. It is only when people realize that it is not so great and struggle that they become photographers. The “truth” That Bamberger seeks to find can be seen as as synonymous with beauty in this context, beauty being something he defines as “a particular kind of form that human beings find pleasure in.” It is from this that Bamberger tries to understand the truth of the world.
It is from here that Bamberger distinguishes the difference between “truth”--an abstract concept agreed upon--and “reality”, being something tangible to experience with ones own senses. He says that “reality is what you make up it,” insisting that we all interpret the world we inhabit and its meanings in our own way. He believes that even what we consider to be truth is merely construction.
After this point, the article goes on to discuss the theoretical understandings of the Tom Bamberger’s photography. The author, Yi Hui Huang, interprets that there are apparently two layers of reality present in Bamber’s work: “his sensory experiences, and his own construction of those experiences.” The sensory experience is caught in the photographs themselves with the construction being what happens once manipulates them with Photoshop. The author explains how Bamberger’s first player indicates a problem, wherein the second layers seeks for truth via experimentation. This, according to Huang, is why Bramberger says, “you don’t make art unless you have a problem with reality.”
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