One of my favorite photographs was made by the great Irish/American photographer Alen MacWeeney. At first glance, it merely records the landscape as seen through a window of an old country house. We see a field dotted with cattle, but in the foreground we also observe that the window sill is covered in a random pattern of dead flies that mirrors the arrangement of the cows outside. (The image can be seen at alenmacweeney.com).
Importantly, the depth of field extends all the way from the flies to the horizon. It is MacWeeney's concern with the formal aspects of the photograph that makes this a memorable image, because, really, who gives a damn about a pile of dead flies.
I came across Alen's image again recently as I was flipping through a book called 'Contact: Theory' in which a curated group of photographers discuss their process of culling images from contact sheets. According to MacWeeney, "The illusion ... of having taken an exciting photograph is a burden ... unbalancing one's readiness to make a selection from what is on the contact sheet rather than what is in the mind."
