Archive for the ‘the lying truth’ tag
Photo versus Metaphoto: Ronosaurus and Omarrr on Instagram
Taking a photograph is not a natural act. We were not born with a compulsion to take pictures and an innate sense of composition. Give a camera to a toddler and many photos will be of strips of sky through blurred, pink fingers. Children must learn how to operate a camera, how to select an interesting subject, and how to frame a picture.
Though it is a common convention in photography to erase the photographer, to pretend he or she does not exist, the photographer is always present. The very act of choosing a subject is a manipulation of reality as it emphasizes a particular object or space above others. This paint spill on the sidewalk was just a paint spill until I took a photograph of it. The act of taking the picture suggests that the paint spill is worth examining as you might an abstract painting and draws attention to shape, color and texture. It changes the spill. A photographer, then, can never capture an unadulterated moment.
(Mural in Lower Haight, San Francisco.)
The Conventions of Unconventionality: An Overview of Metafiction
An overview of major themes I found while studying metafiction for the Metaclass, a self-study course for a masters of literature at San Francisco State University. This summary will also serve as a guide to the posts I have written over the last four months (with notes about a few others I intend to write). It is not meant to be a comprehensive list of meta conventions, but an addition to the the list found under Meta-Meta and Metafiction. (Nor is this intended to be a summary of themes I developed about writing and teaching, the metaclass aspect. Those themes may be found in Putting It All Together: Collaborative and Integrated Reading and Writing.)
