Beyond the Image: 'Golden Ratios' - a photography exhibition by Christopher Lanczycki

[winterspel]

As a personal note, and a preface to this post, I have to say that I live for moments of inspiration. When I see or hear something magnificent, it gives me such a high that I can float on it for a long time. And I want to jump up and down and shout it out to the world so they can experience it, too. I've had this feeling before for various things

Comments

[firefly1984]

I was looking at these late last night for quite a while but was having difficulty trying to get my head around the concept. But I was probably trying to think too much in sort of mathematical terms as opposed to more broader notions of value etc, which was strange anyway seeing as I've never had a great maths brain.

Looking at them again today, though, I think I'm now beginning to understand some of them although, admittedly, at the moment it's only those which outwardly appear the most simple to grasp, such as the 'Making Mom's Day' stamp and the 'Golden Rectangles'. But I'm guessing there's probably a deeper layer of meaning hidden in them which I'm not aware of. In any case, the photographs are great!

[winterspel]

Many of these require a fair amount of cultural knowledge of the U.S. in order to understand, so I can understand why you would be scratching your head over them. You can look them in mathematical terms, but they are indeed about "broader notions of value," as you say: about more abstract and possibly indefinable concepts of value, such as "39 Making Mom's Day" - how you can put a value on the happiness you can give someone? And yet, it is true that for a mere $.39 (in the U.S.) you can send your mother a card that will make her smile and feel good.

I'm so glad you like the photographs! If you would like me to try to explain my interpretation of any of these, I'd be happy to. Unless you know baseball, I wouldn't expect you to know "8 CPR for a Monopoly" and even "1803 Towards a Manifest Destiny" may not be common knowledge for non-Americans (and sadly, even for many Americans, that may be a piece of our history that is often forgotten!).

Thank you so much for taking the time to look at these. :)

[icajoleu]

In retrospect, I should have put a disclaimer not to view when tired ;-) But yeah, as winterspel says, there are a bit more US cultural references than I realized at the time - and in retrospect more than I would have liked. When immersed in it, it can be frustratingly hard to tell when that's going on. Bloody brainwashing ;-)

The math part of it was not intended to be taken too seriously, beyond using that 21 digit number as a scaffolding and outline of sorts for the images to follow, and that it is the GOLDen ratio plays into the whole cost/value notion. The equations were introduced solely so I could echo/abuse the visual structure of the real, precise mathematical equations in the text overlays on the individual images in the context of imprecise and sometimes unreal notions of value. For some perverse reason it seemed natural to throw a bit of misdirection in by making the first part read like a math text :-)

OK, enough babble.