Jeremy Ross Media

TRAINED OBSERVERS OF…IRONY?

“Responsibility” is “The Ability to Respond” This quote is one of my favorites from my MFA photography instructor Nathan Lyons, who started the school I attended: The Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY.

It’s a Zen-like phrase to hold in one’s mind while wandering around making pictures. Years later, I realize how well it harmonized with his goal to make us into“trained observers.”

At first I thought that he was just giving us a boot-camp rallying cry. “Come on! If you want the right to be a card-carrying homo sapiens, act more alert!”

Later, I realized that another meaning this phrase held for me was even more resonant.  Signs, symbols and words that we take for granted have wonderfully slippery meanings that are informed by the breadth of our cultural training and experience.  Things taken for granted can can be re-seen and re-discovered, finding essential meanings that extend the commonly-held definitions of things we are observing.