I'm not the guy who was in Honey,
We Shrunk Ourselves, or The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys.
One of my interests is in relation to photography is nominalism:
The Columbia
Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001.
Nominalism
In philosophy, a theory of the relation between universals and particulars.
Nominalism gained its name in the Middle Ages, when it was contrasted
with realism. The problem arises because in order to perceive a particular
object as being of a certain kind, say a table, we must have a prior notion
of table. Does the kind “table,” described by this prior notion,
then have an existence independent of particular tables? Nominalism says
that it does not, that it is just a name for a group of particular objects.
Nominalism is appropriate to materialist and empirical philosophy and
hence has been popular in modern thought. 1
See R. A. Eberle, Nominalistic Systems (1970).
If the above
seems confusing, that's because it is, more or less confusing, but in
a good way.
I had a professor
who wrote something along the lines of 'can't you see it as it is'?
in a sort of commentary about nominalism which I interpreted as perhaps
about the classic, or fundamental confusion between thoughts in the
form of words, and sensory experience.
In other words, if I am taking a picture, I try not to apply verbal labels,
such as 'tree', or 'waterfall' so I don't trigger a habitual thought
pattern usually entailing more word labels, so that I can try to experience
the sensory situation and not merely my own thoughts, thoughts
being limited, and 'reality' being perhaps infinite.
So I have
not included location names for the photos, because an established place
name can have a habitual, and predictable association, and maybe a predictable
outcome.