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Visual Inventory
WHAT IS A VISUAL INVENTORY?
I came across this concept probably about 10 years ago when I bought the book ‘A Visual Inventory’ by John Pawson. It is a fantastic book, and this idea of reaching into the past and delving into my archives of images to draw out two images that to me have some relationship, that is not always obvious at first glance, is very powerful.
I have dithered over doing this for so long, thinking am I plagiarising this idea from Pawson? Surely ‘visual inventory’ can mean many things? Surely it’s not his idea? Well… If it is, great. Here I hope to pay homage to this fantastic idea and set about cataloguing my own visual inventory. We are all guilty of the snap a pic, let it sit in the cloud or on our phones for always, without ever going back in to look at it, use it, return to it, review it, dwell in it, savour it.
This blog is also about tasking my self with a frequent review and evaluation of the images I choose to capture and store. What meaning do these have at the time I took the pictures? What meaning have they taken on after being stored for so long? What dialogue do they have with other images I have since captured, or images that I have captured deep in the past? What are the themes that emerge? Are there any answers here? Or just questions?
So, come with me on a journey, into the past, into the future, into my archives of images. Come and witness my Visual Inventory.
I love this idea and I love your image pairs, I certainly see the pair of b & w stripes reflected in some of your quilt designs. Also love the dot pair!
Thanks Anne! I need to post some more pairs. This is kind of one of those slow burn projects that always seems to be going on in the background. Time to bring it back to the foreground I think! Thanks for your enthusiasm!
Ally I love this idea
Also the idea of continually editing to pick out the ‘best’, we can get so overwhelmed, it’s got to a point now that try to edit ‘as I go’. But now will take that a step further thank you.
Everything in its place and that.
Awesome! So glad you found something useful in all this. It really helps having a ‘purpose’/reason for sorting through everything, otherwise, why bother? Visual Inventory is my purpose anyhow. Thanks for commenting!