Task - The photographic nature of my work

After viewing the case studies for this weeks task, I felt at first a disconnected with the characteristics put forward by Szarkowski. He first of these "The Thing" seemed to imply to me that photography could not be away of story telling, creating narrative, witch I very much disagree with. The work of one of my most idolised photographers, Gregory Crewdson, is all about creating his own reality straight from his mind, and I feel that my work follows in that path. However, where Crewdson creates his works from the ground up, I go out and find mine, and as such my photographs fit in with Szarkowski characteristic of "the thing" or "the actual". My photographs are purely what is front of the camera, almost as found, I rarely change my scenes, except to put myself within them, and the actuality of the photograph is that I AM there taking and being in that photograph. You might even argue that Crewdsons work also fits in, because the reality is that in creating the picture of the lady in the water from his Twilight series, she was in the water and he was watching this scene, its not fake or unreal, this did happen. Only our perception of the photograph alludes to some other non-reality where this woman really is floating in her flooded living room.

Henri Cartier Bresson's decisive moment

Time on the other hand is not so important for me. I don't have to wait for Bressons decisive moment when I am creating my night images, in fact with many of the images I spend a lot of time, taking multiple photos over and over again untill I am happy with what I have achieved, making small adjustments to the location of the camera (The Vantage point also sits well with me) and considering if I should put my self in the photo, if so where? am I happy with the exposure, can I change it in any way? It does not matter to me if I spend five minutes to take an image or 60, and it does not matter to me witch one within that time frame is the one I decide to be THE image. They key for me is that the aesthetics are right, and that I feel the feeling I am trying to create is communicated to the voyeur.