The Blues and the Abstract Truth

Oliver Nelson one of the great composers and arrangers of the sixties and early seventies contemporary jazz music scene shot to fame with his seminal album, titled above. The luminaries that he collected for this album, including Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, Bill Evans and others place this album amongst the great recordings of modern jazz. Recorded in 1961, Nelson’s career last only until 1975 when he died of a heart attack. It is one of the “coolest albums” of the genre and recommended, not least because it contains some images by Chuck Stewart .

Digressions aside – the most famous track on the recording, which opens the album, has become a standard in the jazz repertoire, the composition that established Nelson’s name in the genre is in a melancholic C minor key, namely “Stolen Moments”. Nelson writes “As a player, I became aware of some of the things that I knew existed, but I was afraid to see them as they really were.” cover notes from the aforementioned album sleeve.

In photography the “decisive moment” is illusory, there is no moment; there may be a variable period when a recording takes place that smudges across time. The myth of the revealed truth in any frame at any stage was surely debunked a century or more ago. Similarly the concept of analogue photography versus digital, when all along, and today still, there is only digital photography, not just that process is initiated by the digit, but the shutter is closed, then opened, then closed. The recording, however, is every bit as analogue today with the latest of sensors as it was when Fox Talbot made his first exposures. The differences today with the “digital” camera and the “analogue” camera are the levels of remove between the eye (the mind and imagination) and the end image.  The frames of moment/time and of the encapsulated visage through the lens are the twin determinants that the artist can provide some control over; these twin choices are both in the gift of the photographer, both are conscious decisions in the process of capturing the slough of moments that will end up on the exhibition wall or, more likely, the "back up" recycle bin.  The momentary and impermanent nature of the image through the viewfinder provides the photographer with the greatest level of control over the final image; it is only these two devices, which have been ever-present since the development of the captured image, that can link the camera operator with any vestigial claim on truth associated with the end print.

Staying with today’s technology and the transience of space and time; the abstraction that divides the photographer from any final image displayed on screen, wall or the round filing cabinet are now so prodigiously wide that some photographers spend more time interpreting the physical limitations of the processes of image development more than image creation itself. To compound the lack of control, in this erstwhile manual process, is the relinquishment of the governance of truth, of the embryonic image, to the levels of abstraction, layered and blended in ways by which no single man alive can fully determine or deconstruct. The initial abstraction that removes the taker from the “reality” starts with the technology of sensor construct, the algorithms of cell composition, digital signal processing, the formulaic colour management, focus and sharpening before the finishes via, whatever "post processing" the artist feels is required, to an eventual image re - production via excursions of software, printer hardware and their concomitant profiles, ink recipes, which again the photographer may, or may not, make an attempt at craft control.

If Nelson was "aware of things that existed, but was afraid to see them for they really are" then what do we as photographers, as recordists, for recording is what we can do best, respond when we see things and attempt to portray them as they really are? For us, as photographers, the truth is an ephemeral concept, it is abstracted away from us the moment the shutter release is allowed to instigate the process of recording and every event in the subsequent in the chain of command further decouples us away from reality.
I have for a long time particularly enjoyed Nelson's signature composition "Stolen Moments", it's soulful development of the 16 bar piece is both lyrical and contemplative. It's title though now excites another lever to consider when looking for any "moment" to record. Just where does the truth lie?