ISSUE 30
A collaboration with Jérôme Montagne
As Henri Cartier-Bresson said: “Of course it’s all luck.”
Everyone wants luck, but not everyone believes in it. Life is full of puzzling coincidences and we wish them into existence, but still — many doubt whether luck really exists.
What we call luck, the scientists call chance. Scientific philosopher Karl Popper argues that it is impossible to prove the existence of chance scientifically. Yet science accepts chance, because as scientist Nahum Kipnis says, “Ignoring the role of chance in science distorts the nature of the scientific process.”
How about photography? Is it chance, good luck or a blessed combination of both — or simply patience, practice and more patience, combined with a tiny portion of luck? When something happens without us expecting it or consciously doing anything to make it happen, we sometimes attribute it to good luck. And yet sometimes we have to work hard to make luck come our way.
“ I always wanted to be a photographer. I was fascinated with the materials. But I never dreamed I would be having this much fun. I imagined something much less elusive, much more mundane.”
Lee Friedlander
So where does photography fit in with this? Photographers usually research, imagine, play and experiment with their ideas. So do they will their images into existence? Or do they happen by chance? Is it knowledge, experience or perfect timing that the first roll of film went well and the artist was exhilarated by their findings and continued on with the project?
As I pondered these questions with Jérôme Montagne, I realized that it is not necessarily a question of comparison, but rather of what lies between. In this issue you will find a combination of the past/present and chance encounters.
These ten varied observations by the artists offer surprises that exist — yet often go unnoticed in our surrounding environment and daily life. They allow our mind to wander to fill in the sentences between the small fragments.
Christopher Colville
Noémie Goudal
Olivier Seignette
Vasantha Yogananthan
Bertien van Manen
Alexander Gronsky
CJ Heyliger
Pascal Amoyel
Alexandra Soldatova
Shane Lynam
