I have been doing some haphazard reading  about Heidegger rethinking and conception of  poetics and   poiesis in order to develop  my understanding of, and explore  the possibilities  f photography as a poetics. 

Heidegger is difficult going and I've been struggling to understand what he is trying to do.  Heidegger's   reflections on art as poiesis highlights that it is directed toward the question of being and that it  locates the artwork as a specific modality of truth, a way in which truth can occur. This is premised on n decisively ontological distinction between the product (reduction of beings to  the will of the human being) and the work of art.  The artwork is traditionally distinguished from the product insofar as it is not merely formed matter, but formed matter that shows something other than itself, that in some way has an intellectual content or meaning.

The end point  of Heidegger's account of poiesis is that it is  a mode of disclosure  (a-letheia) of being in general (usually referred to as Being) Poiesis refers to  beings themselves to come to presence into the unhidden.   

This  account emerges from  Heidegger's  re-discovery of the pre-Socratics (eg., Heraclitus)  as  distinct from assimilating the pre-Socratics  to Plato and Aristotle, whom Heidegger interpreted as  the foundation  of Western philosophy.  The appropriation and critique of Aristotle lies at the very  heart of Heidegger's philosophical enterprise  regarding the question of being and its history. The  past from out of which we think has to be re-appropriated and interpreted anew, and his pathway was  to  rethink Greek ontology ‘more originally than’ the Greeks themselves.  Heidegger’s critique of the tradition (Aristotle) attempts to think more originally than this tradition in order to transform it.

In the foundational Greek  philosophy, according to Heidegger,   poiesis was orientated to everyday production: ie., the artist  projects an image of the object  i.e. its intended look with the artist shaping the raw material into an artefact thereby  fulfilling this intention.with the product becoming a likeness of imitation of this image/model. This representational model of art is premised on the subject/object  duality. Heifdegger initially accepts this model of poiesis,   but he then deconstructs it by way of returning to the pre-Socratics: he sees them differently to Plato and Aristotle. 

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This picture or representation of quartz was made whilst I was on a coastal poodlewalk in Waitpinga on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia with Maleko, our standard poodle,  in the late afternoon. It was made around the same time as this image which is on the same 35mm roll of colour negative film.

 If it was overcast in the afternoon we would often wander  amongst these rocks on the  poodlewalks,  as the afternoon light is behind us and the soft light brings out the muted and subtle colours of  the rocks and quartz. 

This representational image of quartz is deemed to be a document created using a  transparent medium to produce an image that is readily intelligible. Hence it is a cliche that needed to be subverted by opening up the photographic process to explore the  possibilities of the photographic mediation of the world. That rejection of photographic transparency is the perspective of art history's account of the history of photography and it highlights how the logic of  20th century modernism is a culture of negation.   

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The pictures below and over the page were made in 2021 whilst Maleko and I were on an afternoon  poodlewalk in  the littoral zone in Waitpinga in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula of  South Australia. We often walk along this section of the coast in the late afternoon. Photographically speaking, this littoral zone  works best in low or flat sunlight. It is no good in the bright afternoon sunlight of summer.

The pictures were made  with  my Leica M4-P with a  rigid Summicron 50mm pre-asph lens. As mentioned in an earlier post the rangefinder  recently became salt damaged from a rogue wave surging over me whilst I was photographing.  Leica  in Germany have since informed me that the lens is kaput (ie.,  unrepairable), but that they can repair the camera body.   I have given the go ahead  to repair the camera and  I am hoping that the insurance will cover most of the cost of buying a second hand Summicron 50mm pre-asph lens. 

That decision means that I remain committed to what some call vintage photography that many understand in terms of being wrapped up in nostalgia. Though not born into a digital world, but subsequently embracing it, I accept that I am  a nostalgic photographer whose optimistic  belief in the digital future is becoming outmoded.  What then is analogue nostalgia? 

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Another attempt at a still life in one of the  open air studios:

This studio was located  just west of Depps Beach, which borders Victor Harbor and Waitpinga.