The Focal Press Companion to the Constructed Image in Contemporary Photography

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Constructing Places

Stacy J. Platt

Artists are problem solvers.

In the work of some, the problem that they are wrestling with is evident in their attempts at a solution. The strands of the various threads of their thinking are all visible, leading the viewer as if they were a trail of bread-crumbs to the conclusion of the maker’s thinking on the matter. Other artists work more obscurely, whether by intent or intuition, and part of the problem to solve inadvertently becomes an issue of audience vs. meaning: the viewer must wrestle through an occluded series of elements that may or may not have discernible context, in the hopes of arriving in the general ballpark of concerns that the artist is addressing.

Sometimes the artist knows exactly what ...