I am told that I spend an unusual amount of lot of time sitting
around “lost in thought.” The implication might be that I am wasting
time, but to me it seems just the opposite. It is a time when I am truly
engaged in the moment and aware of what is around me. And perhaps I
am less lost in thought than in looking. I value the idea of getting lost in
looking. A type of looking that is not motivated by trying to identify, find,
discern or discover something, but is looking just for it’s own sake. "Seeing
is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees" is the title of Robert Irwin’s
biography. Before that, it was a line in a Zen text. Since I am interested in
a visual art that is about the visual, learning how to really see and
spending much time doing so, seems a very valuable practice to me.
Uta Barth (photographer) , 2007
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