“

It’s baffling to me that there’s any uncertainty over how that truth spectrum exists through an artistic medium. It’s hard for me to grasp because it seems like this spectrum of what we accept and won’t accept as truth in art already exits and is already understood. It seems universally acceptable to dress a suburban family in head to toe denim, arrange them into a strange dog-pile, force smiles, call that photo a family portrait and place it on a mantle as a sort of representation of the subjects. It’s universally agreed upon that it’s unacceptable to dress a man in a spacesuit, construct a studio set to look like Mars, ask him to take a step, plant a flag, then print this photo in a newspaper and call it a representation of truth or history. There’s middle ground between the falsity of what we present and the falsity of perception. This is where artists and redheads fall. This is where a jazz musician is allowed to take liberties in a performance, where a painter manipulates color, where a filmmaker manipulates time, and where a writer connects experiences through their own filter. A perceived truth is being presented, but not under any claims of objectivity.

[…]

Art is not real or truth. It can only act as a representative of subjective reality. In between manipulation and blatant falsities is interpretation and memory. To remember my grandfather’s funeral as grey is accurate to my experience whether the rest of Wintersville, Ohio could attest to the color outside of the Lutheran church that day or not. Creative nonfiction is kind of like painting, music, fashion, photography, cooking, film. It’s about making distinctions, selections, filtering experiences, and individual expression. Creative nonfiction is also unlike any other medium. It is a scientific study of memory, sentimentality, sensation, interpretation, and narrative. For as long as it took photography to stop being compared to paintings and film to moving photographs, I’ll wait for creative nonfiction to stop being compared to jumbo shrimp.

The Missouri Review, “Like a Readheaded Picasso Symphony or Something”
This was posted 3 months ago. It has 5 notes.
  1. tsflynn reblogged this from brighteryellow
  2. brighteryellow posted this