The Peripheral Space of Photography

This new short work explores what separates photography from other artistic media. Nemet-Nejat argues that photographic seeing is not a plastic experience, but a meditative one, built around a relationship between image and words. Through a critique of photographs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition of 1993, he shows repeatedly how the focal points in photographs are often their mistakes (blurs, over or under exposures) and, spatially, exist in their peripheries. This is a profound study of photography by a noted poet and translator. Among Murat Nemat-Nejat books are the essays Questions of Accent and the poems Turkish Voices. He also translated Turkish poet Ece Ayhan's A Blind Cat Black and Orthodoxies for Sun & Moon Press. He lives in New York.

This profound, short essay by poet and translator Murat Nemet-Nejat explores what separates photography from other artistic media. Nemet-Nejat argues that photographic seeing is not a plastic experience, but a meditative one built around a relationship between image and words. Through a critique of photographs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition of 1993, he shows repeatedly how the focal points in photographs are often their mistakes (blurs, over or under exposures, etc.) and, spatially, exist in their peripheries.