John Divola

Born :

1949

To photograph is often compared to an act of redemption - to select from an infinite number of choices that which is to be remembered.

redemption choices numbers

In all my work there's this notion of the melancholic. You can make a photograph about the sublime, but you can't make the sublime itself.

notion sublime photograph

I don't look for things to see how they function as metaphors.... You can't photograph the sublime. You can only traffic in the specific and its relationship to the symbolic.

metaphor sublime looks

The photograph as an object has a relationship to that which it represents something like the relationship the snake skin has to the snake that sheds it.

snakes skins photograph

It's good to be around people who see [photography] as a reasonable enterprise when everyone in the neighborhood may think it's ridiculous. (On the benefit of teaching photography)

photography teaching thinking

I really don't worry too much about what I see through the viewfinder, at least not at that point, especially if I'm using a flash because I don't know what it's going to do. I just see vague potentiality. It's really working with a set of attributes that will hopefully interact in an interesting way.

too-much worry interesting