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This exhibition is part of the Budapest Photo Festival 2024.

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Artist statement

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Fern L. Nesson: Tilt!

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 Standing on Mars

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Scientists fight a never-ending battle against our sensory experience of the nature of the universe. In their search for universal laws and explanations – scientific “truth” – they challenge our most basic assumptions. Each time a new scientific theory is offered, from Copernicus to Galileo, to Newton to Einstein and Bohr, we are forced to question or at least to enlarge our point of view.

 

Take Copernicus. For centuries, we humans clung to the belief that the sun and the planets revolved around us. We were central to God’s whole plan. But the data did not line up. The planets moved irregularly and Mars went so awry that it sometimes moved backwards. Generations of scientists proposed increasingly complex explanations but none before Copernicus took a different point of view. Copernicus imaged standing on Mars. From there, he deduced that it was Earth that moved around the sun, not the reverse.

 

And yet, it does not seem that way to us. In our experience, we are at the center, standing still at the beating heart of a revolving earth-centric universe. As Mel Brooks joked, "sixteen out of nineteen people revolve around the sun." In fact even now, there are respected scientists who continue to place us, at least intellectually, at the center. The current proponents of this theory call it the “anthropic principle”: the universe (and our brains) have evolved exactly so that we could understand its structure.

 

An earth-shaking example of change in point of view in science was Einstein’s discovery of the Theory of Special Relativity. There are deep lessons to be learned from Einstein, not only by scientists but by artists and all of us. Point of view is foremost.

 

When we look at the body of work of a photographer, we can discern his style and point of view. Like the anthropic principle which spurs scientists ever forward to deeper understanding, a sense of the importance of oneself and the validity of one’s point of view may be necessary to produce any coherent body of work. I know from my own work that my camera points, as if by magic, toward certain scenes, colors, angles, subjects. I have a recognizable style, a point of view. Without it, wouldn’t I be lost?

 

But there is a downside, a point at which we may have to change our minds, to stand on Mars not on Earth. Too much of the same is boring. It puts the viewers to sleep, but worse, it will put us to sleep as well. No single point of view, or even passion can account for all of the diversity and wonder in the universe. As Goedel teaches us, there is always something outside the point of view (and outside ourselves) that cannot be explained or proven by any single paradigm.

 

The challenge is as much to see things from outside one's point of view as much as it is to honor our own. I do it by tilting my camera.

 

It’s hard to reach Mars, but it’s surely worth trying. As Buddha said, “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”

 

TILT! 

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Biography

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Fern L. Nesson is a fine art photographer who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She received her MFA in Photography from Maine Media College (2018), a J.D. (Harvard Law School (1971), and an M.A. in American History (Brandeis University 1987).

 

Fern's spare photographs distill reality to its essence, highlighting its energy through the use of form and abstraction. She has had solo exhibitions in Arles, France, the MIT Museum, the MetaLab at Harvard, the Beacon Gallery in Boston, the Auburn Gallery in Los Angeles, Through This Lens Gallery in Durham, NC, Rockport, Maine and on artsy.net. Additionally, her work has been selected for numerous juried exhibitions in the U.S. and in Rome, Barcelona, and Budapest.

 

Fern's photobook, Signet of Eternity, received a 10th Annual Photobooks Award from the Davis-Orton Gallery and her book, WORD, received the 12th Annual Photobooks Award from the Davis-Orton Gallery. She writes historical photo essays for The LivingNewDeal.org, and photo essays on art and culture for BonjourParis.com.

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To find out more about Fern L. Nesson, click here: https://www.fernlnesson.com/

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