Defamiliarisation

DSC_0282, originally uploaded by crumplestiltskin.

‘The problem of the artist is to defamiliarise the ordinary’ – Paul Rand, graphic designer.

The familiar consists of the scope of our experience. Outside of these boundaries, we are lost. When what we see doesn’t fit into the rules we order the world by, we’re suddenly out of our depth, forced to reconsider how we think. But how many times can this happen? Surely there comes a point where everything is ordinary, where nothing can be defamiliarised any more?

The moment of defamiliarisation is liberating. The transition from known to unknown, like a cat’s surprise at the wetness as it walks through a puddle, or a child’s realisation that it cannot touch the objects it sees in a mirror.

How can a photo ever succeed in defamiliarising what it portrays? The graphic designer has the advantage of working in a world that is not governed by physics and reality, being able to step outside of the inherent and imposed limitations of the world and into a place ruled only by imagination. By nature a photo has to have an equivalent instant in time and space, that is, it has to be grounded in the ordinary, which makes it so much harder for it to break down the ordinary. I suppose this makes it all the more real as an art form, and easier to identify with, because like us it can’t transcend the limitations of its form.