Judy Fiskin
[Photographer, b. 1945, Chicago, lives in Los Angeles.]
In my work, the information is the least important part. It’s there, and the work wouldn’t mean the same thing without it, but it isn’t structured around the information. The most interesting part to me is the visual play... looking at this little universe of representation that I can make out of the world.
I was trying to match my mental image of the world, rather than the world itself, and mental images of objects aren’t full of detail. If you think “house,” you’re going to get something very general... Dropping detail made the photographs more general, like mental images.
For me, looking at small images somehow recreates the experience of looking through a viewfinder.... At this size they’re edible. You don’t just scan them. You take them in all at once.
Impenetrable, opaque, obdurate: these are good terms to apply to the work. They all express something about what the world feels like to me.