photographic projects

• the seeings of my beings
• The act of seeing [...] consists largely in selecting that to which we will pay attention, that upon which we will focus, out of the largely unseen flux of the visible. But to place exclusive emphasis on the active agency of our seeing is to falsify visual experience. For a great deal of what we see, and what we look at (the act of attention that may or may not follow on from seeing) is not so much selected as found by chance; it places itself, so to speak, within sight it presents itself to our eyes. This constant renewal of the visible world, to which our response is anything but passive, is one of the wonders of our existence, a source of constant surprise and delight. By placing the actuality of seeing within the reality of being, de vries asserts the complexly dynamic interaction of consciousness with the primary reality of the world.
• The exposition complète was intended to awaken consciousness to the undeniable truth that anything and everything, here and everywhere, is interesting enough to warrant attention. de vries demonstrates this in practice in the series of photoworks entitled the seeings of my beings (begun in 1973 and sporadically returned to over the next three years), each one itself consisting of a random sample of such 'seeings'. In this respect the seeings of my beings are like the 'visual chances' taken in Luang-Prabang. For it was by chance and change that de vries found himself in that particular Laotian town, and anywhere could have served as well for the purposes of the work, which is in itself simply exemplary. Similarly, the locations chosen for his series of seeings - Eschenau, Senegal, Morocco, Kathmandu - have in themselves no special significance. Wherever de vries found himself he might make such works.
• The photographs that make up the various series are, in terms of function, exactly opposite to holiday snapshots, whose deliberate purpose is the capturing of personally significant moments, persons and objects, just as they also differ from those photographs taken of picturesque views, or of natural or cultural topographies, or of objects, buildings, streets etc. of historical, artistic or personal interest. What is more, they have no artistic quality, are in no way posed or composed. As photographs having no burden of emotive or informational intent they are categorically distinct, that is to say, from almost any common, culturally sanctioned or useful kind of photography. They thus fulfil the terms of the proposition-text:
  • every
    thing
    is
    all
    ways
    significant
    for
    all
• The makings of the series of the seeings of my beings were governed by strict protocols that ensured randomness and purposefully eliminated any ascription of special personal significance to any particular moment on a journey or any particular subject for the camera. A typical protocol would determine the date and the time of the taking of a photograph (the camera was often held and operated by susanne). At a specified moment the first photograph - of herman, his being at that precise moment - would be taken. Handed the camera, he would then take the second photograph, of what was in front of his eyes - his seeing - at that moment (see previous spread).
• It is a paradox, not without a certain humour, that only an elaborate protocol of such a kind could determine randomness. In this respect, as we can see, the procedure is directly analogous to that which created the particular, specific and entirely unpredictable configurations of the random objectivations of the same period. the seeings of my beings constituted, then, an important means by which de vries took his art from the abstraction of the graphic plane into the experienced reality of the concrete world. What is most significant about these works is the pure inconsequentiality of the recorded occasion: de vries might be working at a table, anywhere, walking along any street, standing on any balcony, looking into any cupboard, or looking out of any window.
• A work closely related in concept, and also made in the turning-point year of 1973, is actually entitled look out of any window. This consists of a pamphlet published by international artists cooperation (i.a.c.), Friedrichsfehn, which contains thirteen photographs of views taken from different windows, each recording some different circumstance of view: a different 'chance and change situation'; the work is completed by a title page, a text and a colophon. de vries's text takes as its title the injunction that opens the song 'Box of Rain' by Grateful Dead and quotes extensively from the song.
• In 1980, for an exhibition at the Groninger Museum in Groningen, Holland, de vries made looking out of the window itself the substance of the work he contributed. A simple wall plaque of the kind commonly used in museums and exhibitions to identify a work was attached to the wall by the window: blik op de a en het pottebakkersrijge - look out and see potters street. Here it is the mundane and unspectacular street outside that is brought into sharp focus, as if the window were a kind of lens to sharpen and enhance the reality, the 'actual poetry' of the everyday world.
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