What’s my intention?
The other day I found myself in the Rijks Museum looking at a 1614 painting entitled “Fishing for Souls” by Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne.
Talk about being non pc ! At least in today’s world. It’s hard to imagine posting a photograph these days that so blatantly chose one religion over another, and getting away with it..
Essentially it’s a painting depicting the religious and political situation in the Netherlands in the early 17th century.
The 80 Year’s War (yes 80 years!) between the Netherlands and Spain was in full swing at the time of this painting.
Catholic Spain vs Protestant Netherlands.
You can imagine the amount of paintings - given iPhones weren’t in circulation at that time - that were being produced to favour one side over the other by artists on all sides.
On the Dutch side you had the likes of Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Vermeer. And Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne…
Crowds of Protestants on the left side and Catholics on the opposite bank. Riverboats carrying people of both faiths, each trying to recruit souls over to their own side. There’s lots more detail here if you’re interested.
Anyway, looking at this painting got me thinking of all the reasons we take photos. It was clear that Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne had a motive here trying to tell a story and communicate that the Dutch had a promising future - the sun shining, the trees full of leaves etc and that whoever wanted to be saved was better off swimming to a Protestant boat.
But what’s our reason? Our Intention.
Whenever you press that white button on your iPhone to take a photo, my guess is that you’re doing it for one of three things -
you want to remember - be it a person, place, moment or experience that would otherwise disappear into the ether
you want to connect - i.e. - to express affection, friendship, love or belonging and to share that experience with others
you want to tell a story and communicate something about a person, place or situation that goes beyond the single moment.
Of course there are other reasons we take photos apart from those three reasons, such as a way of
to make sense of the world
to explain what we’re seeing
to create
to witness
to discover
to express ourselves
to hold on to what matters
None of these motives for taking photos are any more valid than others. We all have reasons we take images.
The latest figures I read were that the world captures approximately 2.1 trillion digital photos each year, which breaks down to roughly 5.7 billion photos every single day and over 61,000 photos every second.
In my last post entitled Expectations of Myself, I mentioned some stats that Sean Tucker mentioned a recent YouTube.
Sketch Images 3-5 per day
Publication Images 20-40 per year
Portfolio Images 3-5 per year
Legacy Images 3-7 in a lifetime….
Sort of pales into insignificance in comparison to 61k per second…
What are your intentions in taking photos? To tell a message like Adriaen, or to remember or create…?
