Why VERITAS?

August 2024

It’s been halfway through 2024. Some things I’ve mentioned in previous blogs had come to fruition: more solo sessions, incidences involving events and subjects — in particular, cosplayers have surprisingly a plethora of said incidences, dubbed as ‘dramas’, often linked to promiscuous nature of our species, more experiences on death, and me experiencing self-doubt and adversities that made me wanted to stop doing this.

Yet I persevere. VERITAS must be done. Who else will do this?

Out of necessity and not desire (I honestly fucking don’t want to do this!), I sacrificed money, time, and health for pursuits of understanding beauty, appreciating life, and undertaking an artistic project (or in Layman’s term, doing art). Yes, working on VERITAS is more of a trial and tribulation than actually enjoyable piece of project. It brought calamities as much as excitement on me.

Just like life.

Maybe, some of you may think I’m crazy for doing something that brings more harm than good, and that’s where I’ll tell ya why I initiate VERITAS.

Same photos, printed

Photo projects are one of the times photographers have their times when they have their works are appreciated throughout other medium that is outside of our fast-paced world of digital technology. Remember the time you read a family photo album from the times of your grandparents? I’m not even talking about nostalgia effect; it’s how slow it is to reach the end page. I’m not sure if vintage photo albums were designed with that in mind, but this is the kind of experience I’ve experienced multiple times.

Each time a new page opened, my eyes will lock their vision to one photo by another. It’s natural, when it comes to observe details and we’re unconsciously trying to make mental analyses to connect the dots. What are these photos about? Who are in the photos? What are those in the background? Why were these taken and printed?

I realized most of my photos are all digital and not printed, at least not yet. Knowing that digital photos tend to last only a few seconds on their viewers’ eyes, bringing photos to a printed medium may at least help the hungry, ever-curious eyes for looking at those photos in a more thorough, thought-out perspective.

This practice has been done by some notable photographers out there, from pocket-sized zines to encyclopedia-like full-fledged albums, esp. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, and Steve McCurry (there’s also Vivian Maier, but her photo albums weren’t exactly created by her, as all of her photos are of personal use initially). Having their photos printed, according to some other photographers, brought a new sense of understanding, esp. when they were printed on papers that just ‘feels right’.

I think this is similar to how we view live paintings. There are just so many things to explore with each stroke, shape, and composition. This is also why some of us regard photography as a form of Art, myself included, as some photos really bring that sense inside you that speaks beyond words when you see it, provided these photos exist on a different, non-mainstream medium.

That’s why I initiated VERITAS as a printed photo project. It’ll be designed in a slow-paced experience in mind, ensuring you’re not flipping it mindlessly and to immerse yourself for minutes or hours understanding and appreciating the beauty we often overlook on the perpetual tidal wave of information.

Oh, I shouldn’t do that!?

I remember back at the time I ranted about mediocre photos (no, rephrase that — subpar, abysmal, disgusting snapshots!) that invade social media and the Internet as a whole, in which said photos were taken in events that are precisely dreams-come-true to majority of people. I understand their pain for not be able to attend such events, even to the point some people are willing to die — and unfortunately, that happened — just to attend that event!

After some fracas involving some people (attempted to) prohibited me to bring my gears in, I get it.

These kinds of ‘brainrot’ are encouraged. Basically, some higher authorities say “SCREW YOU! (all caps obligatory) We will take better photos than you and you filthy peasants can only take silly photos your future self will condemn at!”

Flash photography, even with the most basic gears, are prohibited in many places, often involving corporate brands or privately-run events. To top that, long lenses that covers more than 100mm of focal length is also prohibited. Surprisingly, zoos are also implementing this recently, in which I don’t understand as of why flash photography got banned in aquariums…

…because as it turns out, flash photography, if not done excessively, is just fine!

Photographing freshwater and marine animals in some ornamental fish markets brought me joy! I do see some animals got freaked out after more numbers of flashes, but it’s mostly on me being greedy. However, the same can’t be said for birds, as they’re surprisingly have more adverse reaction towards flash and the gears (read more about neophobia, strongly evident in parrots). That’s why some of the shots of birds in this project have seemingly off lighting, that’s due to me can only rely on natural light to photograph them.

Banning flash photography on events, on the other hand, has the most bollocks reasoning: everything just circulate to ‘because I/my boss say/s so’. I was expecting more articulate discussion and more understanding from the event organizers’ perspective but this is just a pointless, brain-rotting pseudo-debate that basically puts middle fingers on my face and slap them like miniguns.

I managed to won at one event, and I lost at another, forced me to move to a better kind of event.

That’s when I realize VERITAS can also be a way to protest this nonsense. That there are beautiful beings that also deserve a better presentation, that preserves their aesthetics just like how our eyes see them in real life. Our eyes really are amazing organs, with all their limits, they help us see the beautiful, and our technology is just catching up to help us access that beauty, and eventually put our artistic expressions at them.

Those people had dedicated huge sacrifices to appear their best. I’ve taking photos better than whatever snapshots you can take for 10+ years now. So, move aside and SCREW YOU!

The truth

What is ‘VERITAS’ or its inspiration, ‘veritas’? If you understand Latin, you know ‘veritas’ is a word for ‘truth’, and has been used in many mottos of universities around the world, as well as some Internet presences (the YouTube channel Veritasium comes to mind).

There are multiple interpretations here:

1. VERITAS is a project that not just a way to understand beauty and Aesthetics, but also to understand truth, the real things that is outside of whatever dogmatic beliefs I was polluted into to believe. Reality isn’t like what people say. Some of us will exaggerate, undermine, and even twist information to their own agenda. By each encounter, I learn something new, something that often challenging my mindset and is basically a disagreement or a ‘discovery’. Reality, served raw, is just amazing, and this project represents that. Real, just like what our eyes see.
2. On the rise of AI-generated images, people started to complaint about how said images are now polluting the Internet and there are some potential that it could skew our perspective on reality as we know it. I see lots of complaints on beauty standards that I’ve covered on previous blogs, and AI-generated images amplified this. To serve organic photos (never thought I’d gonna use that phrase) is one of the initiatives of VERITAS. It comes from the actual reality, not virtual reality — or if it can be referred as such. It brings the hardships, pain, and emotions only real-life beings can showcase.
3. I remembered after some events, I undertook photography as a mean to preserve, as to immortalize beauty that one day will gone into the rock bottom of history. Having beautiful people dying enforces this train of thought, as well as me realizing my mortality as well. However, as what 1st point had taught me, focusing on death is not much living, but more surviving. Also I come across of more of a collector/hoarder of beautiful photos than actually appreciating beauty. This is also why I started to disagree on having immortality; beauty, as far as I know, is because it ends. We are alive, we are real, we are awesome, and that’s what we need to focus now, even Dia de Los Muertos is all about living more than death itself (CMIIW). With my photography skill, this is how I appreciate beauty in life just as much how Rembrandt or Frida Kahlo interpreted beauty of life. The film WALL.E also comes to mind.
4. I don’t want to do VERITAS; I need to. This comes from the inkling that desire is unrealistic as opposed to necessity, though it’s not wrong to try to make desires real, pointing out at the mishaps of mediocre photos. I always think it as a loophole: it is necessary to make our dreams come true. So, is it a necessity or a desire? This is also why I rarely use active tenses to describe my process on VERITAS: saying “I want” on this kind of project will only project my desires, in which it’s only having selfish motivations (though philosophically speaking, I think all humans are ultimately selfish) in mind and therefore made me unable to accept things that are outside of my control. VERITAS is, in some points of view, not my project: it is a project that showcases things we appreciate that are outside of our ego.

Appreciating Art/arts and fellow artists

Exotic animals/plants breeders are artists. Cosplayers are artists. Fellow photographers are artists. (Idol) singers are artists. Painters are artists. Collectors, too, are artists.

Knowing more about Art helped me dive down on what VERITAS should be — or, in Layman’s (another) term, how I envisioned VERITAS. From how we created spears to being creative on fire to documenting everyday lives by paintings on caves to the inception of Bhagavad Gita to the invention of airplane to the advent of artificial intelligence, humans and Art have been intertwined. Some of us argue whether non-human living beings (some people seemed to disagree to admit we are animals) can create art or exhibit artistic behaviors, as in the curious cases of crows, octopuses, dolphins, and elephants.

In some senses, after what I have discussed with Mas Joko Kisworo, Art can be however one perceive it, but there is one catch: Art has story and intention (the latter one has more abstract definition, I think). Humans are, so far, the only organism capable to exhibit a complex sense of intention, as shown by our colossal feats of reasoning, philosophy and the knowledge of the Metaphysical. In short: imagination.

This complexity that often combine logical and emotional, mathematical and spontaneous aspects of our psyche is the driving force of imagination, that we can interpret something that can be intrinsically real but explicitly isn’t.

To imagine is to intent. There shall be a clear, concise mental image on our mind —this may work differently on people with aphantasia — to have a bigger picture on our undertakings. Something that also stems from our necessities, desires, and standards. To be able to achieve this level of thought means one has become an artist.

Maybe that’s why people really appreciate craftsmanship, martial arts, and the concept of culture as a whole. Human evolution is just incomplete without imagination, and therefore Art. Art is always be with us and will always be; it’s just whoever is able to partake such undertaking.

Due to the whimsical, illogical nature of our imagination, Art works in a way that we just don’t understand. Yes, even if you have majors in Art School, there’ll be a guarantee some artists will disagree with your visions. Just like how we try to connect the dots when we see a family photo album, we try to make sense to Art.

The truth is, barely anyone is able to.

We ultimately have our own definition of Art. But what makes our Art is valuable (or in some formal theories, is) is when someone else gets it. Your cosplay is not an Art if nobody gets what you’re doing — as in you can’t elaborate the character you’re cosplaying as and/or if you cosplay for superficial reasons that ultimately still runs within your ego. Your paintings are not an Art if you just make strokes without even involving your mind on them (though, again, people will try to make it one), as in there’s no intention to do it. No visions from you.

In other words, think of Voyager 1 cosplaying as Marin Kitagawa.

I always challenge myself on this during my process on VERITAS. Even I understand that I may contradict myself with this: that I shouldn’t involve myself, my ego, to the project yet I need intention and stories to realize VERITAS.

I always refer to the concept of selflessness often appearing in teachings of several religions around the world. Even on my thought that humans are ultimately selfish, selflessness acts are all about not involving one’s own ego while doing something while still having intentions to do it. These often appear as forms of religious sacrifice, devotion, adherence, or loyalty towards God/gods or any other Metaphysical beings. In this case, I have no desire to do VERITAS, but I keep doing it anyway because of it is Art.

VERITAS has to be done. The show must go on. Yet, I thoroughly understand why I’m the only one doing this.

And that’s why I collaborated with fellow artists in VERITAS. Those who know their crafts inside and out, those who dedicated themselves to partake such perilous undertaking just for the love of it, and those who are the masters of their fields.

It shows, if you truly understand Art. Appreciation, respect, curiosity, and knowledge come hand-to-hand to help you differentiate a dedicated cosplay from a cheesy one, a thought-out breed of an animal from a cash-grabbing one, and a intentionally blurry photo from a blurry photo molded with excuses of ‘being artsy’.

And that, is Why VERITAS.

There’s still 6 months left, or probably 5, I don’t know.

Let’s see how it goes.