Images of “Nothing” ― what it means to you, and how to show it

[leighmarrin]

Wonder if Zippy and ol' Jean-Paul ever did LF?

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/0f3f8503bb.jpg

[Heroique]

The Chinese were the first to discover nothing. Later, the Arabs brought it to the West.

Historians disagree about this; some say nothing goes back further than the Big Bang.

But less about its past, more about its presence.

Some of us have nothing to show.

Tachi 4x5
Schneider XL 110mm/5.6
Polaroid Type 55
Epson 4990/Epson Scan

[SamReeves]

I took this one in the dark.

[Heroique]

I took this one in the dark.

We might need a splash of color after that bleak contribution!

Below is “A Bigger Splash” by David Hockney (1967, acrylic on canvas).

I think it says a lot about nothing, how a visual medium might portray it, plus the age of the painting can help put nothing in wider (contemporary) perspective.

First, there’s the nothingness of the submerged suburbanite – and that, I’m certain, is only suggestive of the nothingness of suburbia. A nothingness of place.

There’s the nothingness of the fleeting, splashy mist.

It’s not perfectly clear what really caused the splash. Was it a person after all? I come away thinking it’s a pool-side chair thrown into the water in a fit of nihilistic rage or boredom. That single, lonely chair on the other side gave me this idea. A nothingness of soul or psychology.

Do the few shadows & flat light suggest a time of day or season? More nothingness, I think. No doubt they make the architecture look flat and unreal. Like a movie set.

And if you think something like a chair has been thrown from your (the viewer’s) viewpoint, you might be participating in the action more than you think!

I wish I had a photo like this, but I have nothing like this.

[Andrew ren]

fuji lens, 57 tmax100.

shall i say 7 holes, 7 balls with A player then? or thats too much.

[Colin Graham]

Nice one Andrew.

[Heroique]

For a portraitist, the word might bring to mind certain expressions by face, eyes, hands.

If I were a portraitist, I’d be shy about showing nothing (and also be sorry for my subject). I suspect this is one reason why examples are yet to appear. Another reason might be that “nothing” is problematic for camera portraiture – and more suitable for other media.

Here are two portraits I thought were equally expressive of nothing. Or is it just one that’s expressive of nothing? Which one? People might get lost in disagreement, before concluding it’s nothing to worry about.

1) Portrait of Innocent X, by Diego Velazquez, 1650.
2) Study After Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X, by Francis Bacon, 1953.

(“I have nothing to express,” Bacon has famously said.)

I do think the second one looks like “camera shake” – or maybe a portrait filter has removed unwanted facial blemishes so nothing is there.

[rdenney]

"Nothing" means just what it says. I do not equate nothingness with being minimal, barren, or even vacant. And it is certainly not the same as being trivial. All of the images here are images of something (even Sam's--it's an image of his copyright notice).

Here is a photograph that hangs in the National Gallery of Art. Sorry, I don't remember the photographer, though someone might. Now, this photograph is a photograph of a photograph that shows nothing. While I don't remember the photographer of the photograph of nothing, I am the photographer who made the photograph of the photograph of nothing. I just want to make that clear.

Close inspection reveals no detail whatsoever, and anything brought to this image is brought by the viewer. (I expect derision is a common theme there.) It is not like Mark Rothko's black paintings, which have texture and variation.

I just came back from Alaska, and there are many places of extreme emptiness, as defined by having no presence of man or his works. But they are filled to the brim with somethings, and to call them barren or nothingness would be to apply extreme human centricity. I can think of many minimalist approaches that might be taken there, but none of which would not also be filled to the brim with somethings.

In music, the only composition that is truly "nothing" is John Cage's 4:33. It is four minutes and 33 seconds of silence. As an idea, it is hard to repeat.

Rick "nothing about nothing" Denney

[keith schreiber]

"Alaska also contains large quantities of nature in the form of tundra (“tundra” is the Eskimo work for “nothing”)."
~ Dave Barry

[Monty McCutchen]

Andrew,

That is a beautiful photograph. Well seen and well printed.

Thanks for the post and the reminder that photos really are everywhere if you can 'see' them. You do it quite often.

Monty