PAINTED STEPS: Mapping the Camino #8

As with any modern journey, photography plays a big part in the making of Painted Steps.

A picture's worth a thousand words
A picture tells a thousand lies
The truth lies in perspective.

The actual painting of the Cometa Roja, red kite, is only 2 inches square, a small addition to Painted Steps, but it can activate a much larger space giving the sensation of distance and speed.

One of my basic rules for Painted Steps is that all the little pictures (icons) have to be of things I actually saw. The pictures are painted from photos, and mainly from my own photos along the Camino.

In Painted Steps, I've used photography in a number of different ways.
 
The photos I took along the way are snapshots. Their intent was to store and carry information, to transport ‘evidence' of being there. They are souvenirs, aide-memoires, notations, a reminder for later.
 
But as Painted Steps has progressed I’ve found the need to use photography to capture the stages of the painting of my pictures, to use photos as tracks in the sand. I seem to need to show the trail from where the painted image comes.
 
And then an unexpected development has cropped up; using photography to create new narratives, delineating relationships between the icons, and between the icons and the ground.

Photography creates another layer of mediated experience, from looking at a painting about an experience, to looking at a photograph of a painting about an experience. The photo has made decisions for you, edits your experience of seeing Painted Steps.

The camera is an intermediary, expert at creating new relationships, contexts, generating new illusions, tales, and excitement. It’s all a question of perspective, point of view.

The photo is a vehicle for showing what the photographer has seen, to encourage you to put your attention on certain things. The language around these photo technologies has become metaphorical. To focus on…To frame a topic… To contextualize… To expose…
The camera can seem to deliver, to bring things close to you, or to take things away, to distance you.

Thoughts take off, go from 0 to 60 in a fraction of a second.

 Slow Travel, Slow art, Slow down thoughts…
 
To think thoughts out clearly, I need the mediation of physical media. Unlike words, mediums with physical properties make demands of specific space, time and place. Things need time, things need place. Things make demands according to their inherent nature and the forces moving them.

So I etch, paint, draw, construct. The rapid shape-shifting of thoughts and words is slowed down in the mediation and transposition to the physical world. It helps me keep on track, stay focused. The Camino is the perfect metaphor.
 
The rules or terms of engagement of my painting are being evolved as the painting is made; the path is created by my going there, my taking the Journey.

BUT How lovely that the Camino path already exists!
 
Slow Travel, Slow art, Slow down thoughts…
Like the Caracol…and the Cometa….

‘Addendum’
"Telling the truth creates fiction.
The cartographer is thus constantly making judgments about what to include, what to leave out and what to show in a slightly incorrect place.”
 
This issue assumes importance as the scale of the map gets smaller (i.e. the map shows a larger area) The absolute positions of major roads are sometimes a scale distance of hundreds of meters away from ground truth, because of the overriding need to annotate (point out) features."