david, a fellow at the wedding, sent gerard a whole slew of photos, and he sent them to the rest of us--and it made me think of my photographic practice

daves purpose was to take pictures of the wedding, not really caring about cliche, spotenatity, aesthetics, or anything but the message i am at a wedding...so teh fotos are badly taken badly lit, unedited, adn you know of people an shit.

there is ap hoto of me and john in the midst of the 150 or so, and i dont like it, i look a little drunk and a little haggard, but i think i dont like it b/c for the past half decade or so, i have been v. careful about the photos taken of me, either:

a) they were taken for conceptual reasons, as jokes, as camp, as roleplaying
b) they were taken udner circumstacnes i could control
c) they were taken at my bequest, or by people i trust not as friends, but as aesthications, who i was sure could maintain an image projected (ie ray or ashley)

so looking at this photo, having a heart break convo with a basic stranger, being snapped, and then not having any input, must be similar to the photos i take of other people, the random off moments, and its strange how uncomfortable it made me.

i think it made me uncomfortable, because i have started to postion my work as "art", with shows in galleries, conversations with artist books, placement in publications that center on art and design etc (jacko, from elk, wont be publishing the pick up truck book after all, but he thot about the work, and he treated it as impt, adn it seemed like he wanted more work), and even some conceptual energy, in that context, and when talking about the photos with other artists, i split b/w doc shot and other--the doc shot being, i saw this and i want you to see this (like the joke at the wedding: obligatory shot of the bride, obligatory shot of teh groom, obligatory shot of geographical locatiopn )--the categories arent stable, doc shots become art shots, and art shots are downgraded, and sometimes it relates to function, but i always think of comoposition, and lighting, adn colour, and crop/edit/refuse to show/erase photos that arent very good...

i took 400 photos at teh wedding, 50 polaroids including. I saved 150 on my computer, and published 38, and if i had another site, i would break that down to maybe 10...of those 38, 9 are doc shots, and 3 are of me...all of them gaurded.

i guess, what im saying is that it seems liek all of Dave's photos are doc shots, and most of them are shit, but they actually feature people, and the people seem to be having some kind of fun, and having a bit of a neurotic flutter, cause an unflattering picture i didnt control ended up on a website...

anyone who wants a link of the photo, can email