Through reading through many of the blog entries thus far I have come to the conclusion that I may have been forced to make a decision that I will deeply regret. Last Friday I was required to attend a mandatory field trip, thus leaving behind one of the most insightful lectures I could have experienced in my academic career. All that I can really go off of is what my peers found important or insightful, which is greatly about the relationship that Baldwin Lee had with Walker Evens and how Evens passed on his tips and tricks.
One of the most reoccurring quotes from the lecture is that "looking is harder than it looks." To me, even the vague comprehension that my peers have of what this truly means is still far beyond true understanding. How are we to know what the artist is truly finding in their own work? Yes, we have these pieces of Evans that have been preserved in his apprentices, but these are only the things he talked about. These are only the things he said. So now, we all have this deeper understanding of why Evens took the images he did and why he tried to make certain images work on a larger scale than others, but will we ever know what he saw when he was “looking”? Is it possible to assume that what he captured with his camera is what he saw? All of the little details are embedded into his work, and unless you’re really looking for it, you’ll miss them completely. Is this also true for the project as well, its purpose? Did Evans try to capture this little detail of American Life that was so embedded into the landscape to the point that you wouldn’t take notice unless you looked so closely that your eyes and mind and heart became strained?
I can scour the Internet for days and still not be able to replace the experience that I was forced to miss out on.
--Cameron Stoeger
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