Moyra Davey

Luiza Benisano

Art 343

Photography and Accident

Moyra Davey’s Photography and Accident was an interesting read. The whole notion of the reading was that accidents in photographs are the lifeblood in photography. Her writings were inspired by Walter Benjamin and how he states that “the viewer of the photograph feels an irresistible compulsion to seek the tiny spark of incident, the here and now.” I thought that was an interesting statement because I can relate to what he is saying.  As someone who likes to look at photos, I like to look at what’s on the background as opposed to just the direct focus of the photograph which are the people smiling. To me the accidental photograph taken or things in happening outside of the people smiling in the photograph paint more of a story of what was going on at the moment. I found those statements to very accurate. Personally, I have not come across work that deals with photographic accidents. But it would be interesting to find art works that take away the main image and actually focus on the background or what would normally considered to be the unwanted pictures. Creating that kind of work would almost resound with Dada in the sense that it can have no meaning to it but the images would pique so much interest because people looking at the word would probably try to find a common theme or meaning behind it. I personally would probably be the type to do so.