travels experience recording methods culture
documentation | senses by michael blois
above: the original project: the experience of traditional and urban tea house spatiality
the camera and the tea house the photograph and the place
Yoshikien Garden in Nara: this path forces one to focus on each step and change of direction to avoid tripping, but at the same time you are positioned to observe the entire garden rather than one specific object.
context While it is understood that looking at a photo is not a replacement for personally experiencing a place, through our senses we are able to understand a great deal about a place by simply looking at a photograph. When I visited Kyoto and Tokyo to study the Japanese tea house and garden from a sensory perspective, my primary means of documentation was the camera. I wanted to use it to capture and to convey important aspects about moments I experienced. I avoided wide frames and dramatic angles in favour of framing the image exactly as I actually saw the space. Increasingly the value of photography is discounted because it is so ubiquitous – grabbed images on phones without concern for the quality of lighting or the frame. And architectural publications use photographs taken from such dramatic angles and with enhancements they create an alternate version of the subject. Rarely do such images represent the moment the photograph was taken. With so many things vying for our visual attention, advertisers and publishers rely on bold and surreal images to draw viewers to their brands, all of which have led us to distrust the photograph and to discount its ability to record qualities of the built environment. However, if photography is approached from a sensory perspective, experiential qualities of a place can be recorded.
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Michael Blois
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