I’m not a photographer but I think I’d like to be. I always have plans to start doing interesting things and posting the photos on instagram but I can’t stand taking pictures of doing interesting thing to post on instagram, it sucks the air out of it for me.

I think that there is a more conceptual side to it that I would like to explore – things like teeth, I love teeth, or sunburnt skin peeling off, or maybe pond scum. I can take really easy pictures of food etc that match a style common to food blogs and that will accrue me social capital but I don’t know if it’s as valuable as I can make a photo – appetizing, but not leveraging emotion.

I think it’s actually worth dissecting what I find so interesting about photos invoking disgust, or maybe more that interesting photos invoke disgust inherently.

how would i argue this thesis if I wanted to?

well in terms of the conventions of photography in a certain genre ( I have the impulse to explore both food blogger photos and like erotica) they are useful for certain things.

actually

look at the medium by which images are communicated almost exclusively in this era – through the internet (moderated by corporate interests) or by advertising (I incude television in this). this isn’t a rule, but again movies are also moderated by what sells or what is selling something, or quite possibly both. and what sells is of course the pleasurable.

but eventually, that which is (simply, saccharine, exclusively) pleasurable gets familiar, so a way to ensure that an image is not (of a style) already distributed and therefore boring is to make it disgusting. or maybe I am wrong, and should reverse this, that which is not marketable may invoke disgust by virtue of being new? that there is an instictual reaction of fear, disgust to the visual language codified by advertising being broken. ( a way to test this would be to photograph something normal in a new way and see if I can make it disgusting and uncomfortable just by breaking the visual codes, can I make cinnamon rolls awful)

another approach that I could take here is that there is simply an (appetitive) reaction to the subject of the photo. i think this at the very least has some truth to it, food is food and sex is sex and disease is disease – there is an element of style here too, harsh lighting like that of a doctors office moderates a disgust reaction to an innocuous photo because of our prior association. I think theres something dialectical (thats crazy bro) here through in that the appetitive reaction at a certain quality turns into its opposite. take for example the picture on my board of a woman with extremely long hair. despite it’s cultural covetedness, the fact that her hair is so long, too long makes it suspicious and disgusting. the other obvious example here is monotonous and sick-making hyperreal pornography. it is too sexy. If I were to bring this technique into food I would literally invoke massive quantities or extreme tastes. a massive chewy sticky block of mozzarella. a spoonful of stevia so much sweeter than sugar. richness beyond taste. saccharine. I would also say that there are aspects inherent to that which we desire appetitively that make is dangerous, and in fact the subjects that invoke desire and disgust must always have the capacity for both because we have the ability to discern and because of their intimacy. that which we desire is also that which is most effective at making us sick, the organic, food can poison you. sex brings disease (there is also something to be said about the level of scrutiny which we subject either item to relative to other things. we can fine-tune our reaction to such things in a different way I think, like how humans can recognize faces).

to do somewhat of a series where I photograph according to convention and outside of it (again I think I should look to john berger for a starting point here) in order to invoke disgust to test my hypothesis that (because image is moderated by commerce) most images are moderated by what is (not just pleasurable) but least likely to repulse. If I can manage to make cinnamon rolls repulsive through unconventional technique, then this supports my hypothesis (although we still have the problem of familiarity. my issue here is that one cannot really create an image that is both unfamiliar and following the conventions established by advertising. is it pretty because it is familiar, or familiar because it is pretty? likely both. so can I make something familiar as a photograph that is not pretty, or make something unfamiliar as a photograph that is pretty)(an experiment here, the vice versa of the disgusting cinnamon rolls, would be to photograph mouldy food in the way that a food blogger or a fast food chain might

yes

I think of horror films or documentaries (slaughterhouses, skid row etc)

is it by nature exploitative? probably…

I want to return to my idea regarding photos taken in the style of medical images – these by nature cannot be used for the purpose of marketing, so they are not distributed and incorporated into photography as a form. beyond my previous note that often the subject that is being photographed is dangerous to the self,

way I would conceptualize this

	in agreement with conventions of photography	not in agreement with conventions of photography
subject is appetitively desirable	food blog photos – marketable	ugly?
subject is appetitively repulsive, extreme	horror movies, poverty porn – marketable	definitely ugly

this chart requires the note that beauty is created through a mean – that which is appetitively desirable when brought to either extreme becomes repulsive. if I’m to develop this further I should read and reference nicomaecean ethics and the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction

I’ll keep working on this but wanted to get it out there as a start.