Charles Hagen
statement
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I value the certainty with which photography records the world, but I also value its limitations, its inability to get things right. I seek moments when visual appearances don't match what I expect, when an unexpected glitch, in the camera or myself, opens questions about just what's going on. I try to work in the gap between seeing and knowing. I find photography a source of endless questions about how the world works, and how that might differ from what I see or believe or want.
Much of my recent work records details of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where I live. Williamsburg has a long and rich history, but in recent years it has become known as a haven for artists, musicians, and young families. I try to record the diversity of the neighborhood, and my sense of discovery as I walk through its streets.
This project has led me to think of the physical face of Brooklyn as a complex palimpsest combining architecture, transitory marks (graffiti, posters, signs), greenery and weeds, and effects of light and shadow. In Williamsburg I photograph physical details in closeup, defamiliarizing them and denying easy readings. The resulting images retain specific references to their underlying subjects, but they gain aesthetic and formal strength.
In an earlier series I photographed my daughter extensively. I did not regard these pictures as family photographs or portraits, and certainly not as documents of a particular time or social situation. Instead I thought of my daughter as an actress and worked with her in visually evocative settings to discover expressive gestures, creating a kind of symbolic theater.
A good photograph makes me want to look at it again and again. It gives me visual pleasure, but it also makes me ask what I am looking at. How is the photo different from my memory of what it records? Through the intermediaries of a lens and a frame, I can make part of the world take on thrilling and deeply personal meaning. Where inside myself does that meaning come from? What am I telling myself through the picture?
A central function of photography for me is simply to allow me to notice things, to pay attention, to acknowledge and take pleasure in both the richness and contradictions of seeing.
