Presence

"The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, not by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution, but by the pleasurable activity of the journey itself." -Coleridge, poet

Art as Experience, John Dewey. 1934

The Berkley Publishing Group, Penguin USA.

Although somewhat dated in that what Dewey novelly stated long ago at the time of publication, we now accept as obvious. This gives insight to gain an understanding of art both as a producer and as a spectator. The central theme is that life is an experience, and that the goal of art is to recapture that experience. He captures a number of concepts established earlier by Leo Tolstoy in his "What is Art?" but goes deeper into them, expounding on their more practical uses.

This relates to my work because a huge part of my photography relies heavily on the viewer to feel a presence, or other life in the work. Im working partly to capture an experience that could eventually be real, while creating a presence of life at the same time to create more of a personal feeling.