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I found these pictures about a month ago at two in the morning on the Quai du Louvre, lying on the ground. I saw the first one and picked it up, thinking that it was a stray postcard from one of the bouquiniste's stalls, and as I walked on, I realized that it was a black and white print, and then I saw the second one, a few metres ahead. I grabbed that one, too, and then looked around for more, and after following a little photograph Hansel and Gretel trail for a while, I ended up with five. I think I got them all. |
 I didn't think to note the sequence in which I found them and they're presented here in the order in which I scanned them. I think it's random. I'm not certain what they're showing, exactly - it looks like an architectural model, but I'm not even sure they're the right way up. I carried them around in my backpack for a few weeks and every once in a while I took them out and tried to decipher them, to imagine who took them, and what they're of, and whether the photographer threw them away or dropped them or placed them where I found them, and whether or not they were supposed to be so washed out and fuzzy. |
 I hadn't thought of showing them to anyone, but a couple of weeks ago I was having dinner with friends, and someone was reminiscing about her art school days, and how students and professors would sit around getting drunk together, arguing the nature of Art. What is Art, they would say, apparently. Can you shit in a bucket and have it be Art? I subscribe to Scott McCloud's definition of Art, and thus think this is a really stupid question and I said so. My art school friend looked hurt. I pulled the photos out of my knapsack and plunked them down on the table. Are these Art, I asked? |
| Are they still Art if they weren't supposed to be out of focus and overexposed? Was it then competence or incompetence on the part of the photographer that made them Art? Or are the photographs perhaps not in and of themselves Art, but the deliberate placing of them somewhere and leaving them to be found -- did that make them Art? Or is it worse... is it my finding them and placing them even further out of context that makes it Art, a transformation caused only by the scrutiny of a qualified observer. I sat down. What a goddamn horrible thought. May I have some more wine, please? |  |
| All the pictures here meet my new, apparently not-very-strenuous definition of Art : "Art is that which is blurry" I think they're all the right way up except for this one; I can't decide if it's someone's thumb or someone's face. |
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| What do you think? | |