The Photograph That Took the Place of a Mountain Quotes

“Taco Hidde Bakker: (quoting a sentence from Schles' book "Oculus") Further on you write, decidedly, “Seeing is not knowing. Recognition is not knowledge”. […] Muses are the origin of knowledge. Almost everything one knows and is able to know nowadays, comes from hearsay, isn’t based on one’s own experiences or witnessing of events. Most of us don’t even directly witness historically decisive events (or what have come to be portrayed as such by the media) during our lifetimes. By means of the mechanisms of complex (visual) representation networks, we are second-order or even third-order witnesses. If we were to consider photography sui generis, then it is a Muse. It is virtually omnipresent, it sees everything, transmits visual evidence to people all over the globe, and enlargers their body of knowledge.”
― Taco Hidde Bakker, The Photograph That Took the Place of a Mountain

“Ken Schles: … In one sense we’re all translators living in that “utmost untransparent darkness” (quoting Joao Guimaraes Rosa). And it’s our special responsibility to illuminate the world for ourselves, yes: because we need to know and experience the world first to understand it. but more importantly: We need to translate it for each other, to help each other stumble though it. Maybe even to be sometimes amazed by it.”
― Taco Hidde Bakker, The Photograph That Took the Place of a Mountain

“Ken Schles: Modern humans think and operate under the percept that knowledge comes from within us, but I see us in a transitional phase where cybernetic knowledge is destroying the boundaries of where memory and knowledge is situated. It’s a crisis in the making. But perhaps there’s always been confusion. Culture, a creation of Mnemosyne, is nor something that can be possessed internally. It can only be experienced outwardly, collectively, in communication with, in participation with. Perhaps, that’s why collectors put such a high price on art: so they can privately imprison an expression of gods.”
― Taco Hidde Bakker, The Photograph That Took the Place of a Mountain

“Ken Schles: Image and text are two ways to probe existence. They operate differently and inform each other in rich and profound ways, but the two never meet except in a kind of long-distance dialogue. It’s a dance I’m entranced with, but I can’t say I understand it.”
― Taco Hidde Bakker, The Photograph That Took the Place of a Mountain

“Taco Hidde Bakker: Originality is an overrated concept. Nothing that we have can ever be properly ours. It is a good thing to acknowledge influence, and he who is open to many influences can in the end participate in a main stream (without becoming mainstream per se).
Ken Schles: Linking into that stream is empowering. So much more unites us than we let ourselves believe. So much that we think original is nothing of the sort. Culture builds on itself and replicates itself. Tribal culture, capitalist culture thrives on highlighting dissimilarities, but shared aspects of culture unite us (and interest me). Our cultural regurgitations not only bind us together along points of unity, they replicate and radiate through us in thought and action. We mimic culture outright or mark it with unique signatures specific to our time in space.”
― Taco Hidde Bakker, The Photograph That Took the Place of a Mountain