Chance takes such a large part in photography. With practitioners such as John Baldessari relying on it. Which some may also consider as luck. Looking at a football match. Dozens of photographers pitch side with big lenses. No luck or chance they are there, however, often only one captures the face with the ball being headed into the net. Is that luck? Is that chance?
Modern technology allows a myriad of shots to be captured within one second. So are these photographers relying on the chance or luck presented? with the rapid-fire of the modern DSLR, 6-12 frames per second, the shot before the buffer is full and then miss the next?
I have the feeling that these photographers are doing just that using the luck and chance just to get the next shot. If it was technical only one camera would need to be present. This shows that in any practice there has to be chance or luck, The luck is maybe which side of the field you’re at and the chance is you started depleting your buffer at the right moment.
With the abstract practice that I am currently working on, I have to accept that there are times when luck can have a helping hand as I clearly feel others have the same luck. Often one can have the visualisation of the image you want to achieve, but, Unless external factors fall into place the practitioner may not ever get the image.
Baldessari takes chance almost as his brief. The ‘Car colour series’ I feel is inspirational use of chance. Taking images down one side of the street of the parked cars. In itself, this series would not stand out as anything more than colour cards. It’s in the installation for viewing the series that brings it together as art, with spaces left where no car was parked is the significant factor that makes the series work. This is certainly an aspect to remember in that it may not be the one image that is the work but all the images, A reminder of Jeff Wall’s work using many images to create one picture.
