A Tuna’s Eye, Manta, Ecuador, 2003 by Phil Douglis

Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Four: Finding meaning in details > A Tuna’s Eye, Manta, Ecuador, 2003

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21-DEC-2003

A Tuna’s Eye, Manta, Ecuador, 2003

Just as this net full of dead Tuna was about to be transferred from a fishing boat to a truck in Manta’s harbor, I gestured to a fisherman to stop the transfer for a moment and allow a moment for me to make a picture. I saw a detail in the net that summed up the purpose and process of this business – to find, catch, kill and sell fish. I brought my camera to within inches of the wet net, and made this picture. It is built around a single eye, glazed over in death, staring back through the net at us.

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ruthemily		17-Apr-2005 20:23
yes, i understand where you are coming from with that last statement. photos need viewers to make them come alive.

Phil Douglis		17-Apr-2005 18:30
Your comment gives me much to think about, Ruth. As an expressive photographer, I usually try for that neutrality. It is not up to me to beat my viewers over the head with my own biases or feelings. Rather, I try to interpret the subject in such a way so that the picture asks questions, and the viewer supplies his or her own answers. Your own attitudes towards death are not unique, Ruth. Most people find it difficult to look death right in the eye, yet that is what I am asking them to do here. In doing so, I am asking those questions. And you will think about them and answer them in your own way. To me expressive photography is not a one way street. It is not only about my own expression. It is just as much about the feelings and ideas expressed by those will view my images.

ruthemily		17-Apr-2005 08:57
Phil, thanks for responding. i find your comment about making no personal judgement through the image really interesting. i immediately presumed that you were trying to portray the barbarity of the situation. now i see, that you have remained totally neutral throughout and it is our own feelings on looking at the photograph that shape the context in which we think you have taken it. it is my own opinion of the barbarity that led me to bypass your strong neutrality during the discussion. i have huge problems dealing with death, and that is probably partly why i find this image so hard. i guess i'm like most of the non-veggie population who just eat meat and fish without really thinking about what we are eating and how it came to be on our plates. (i just replaced the words "they" and "their" with "we" and "our"...i'm even trying to distance myself through words!) i'll probably never open a tin of tuna in the same way. thank you for making me think.

Phil Douglis		17-Apr-2005 03:17
Death is part of life, yet always difficult to confront. The death of a tuna may be irrelevant to Nut, who comes from a fishing community and eats such food without a second thought. Clara felt otherwise. As do you. It is my task to confront the viewer with detail such as this and stir both the mind and emotions. I make no judgments one way or another. I simply isolate the detail and let it speak for itself within the context of this net. I was both moved and disturbed by the image you link us to here, Ruth. Its detail expresses both vulnerability and helplessness, and makes us all feel as if that hand is our own.

ruthemily		16-Apr-2005 17:52
i find it hard to keep looking at this photo. i have to congratulate you on that...in producing an image that is uncomfortable you provoke a deeper response. even if i view the photo for only half the time i spend on others, i can guarantee i think twice the thoughts. i have a couple of images of my own like this, that address 'deeper' issues that i think we would all like to simply skim the surface of, if we could. one in particular http://www.pbase.com/ruthemily/image/38695850] provoked huge feeling amongst people to whom i showed it. that to me, makes it a successful photograph. i stirred strong emotions, which they then stopped and thought about for a few moments. Clara, your comment "we need blood" is profound and will fuel an evening of deep thoughts!

ruthemily		16-Apr-2005 17:51
i find it hard to keep looking at this photo. i have to congratulate you on that...in producing an image that is uncomfortable you provoke a deeper response. even if i view the photo for only half the time i spend on others, i can guarantee i think twice the thoughts. i have a couple of images of my own like this, that address 'deeper' issues that i think we would all like to simply skim the surface of, if we could. one in particular http://www.pbase.com/ruthemily/image/38695850] provoked huge feeling amongst people to whom i showed it. that to me, makes it a successful photograph. i stirred strong emotions, which they then stopped and thought about for a few moments. Clara, your comment "we need blood" is profound and will fuel an evening of deep thoughts!

Phil Douglis		26-Dec-2004 21:01
Thanks, Nut, for offering this counterpoint to Clara's vegetarian view of this picture. Growing up on the coast of Thailand, eating fish has always been at the center of your life. You are what you are because of what you eat. And in this, Nut is really fish, right I am glad this image has made you stop and think about the relationship between your own life and the lives that are sacrificed so that you can live. Everyone has different ways of rationalizing this, of feeling less guilty. You do it though prayer, and your belief in what you call "The Wheel of Life." In this image, I confront you with a single detail -- a dead tuna's eye -- and trigger a series of thoughts within you. You perceive the net as a metaphor for your "Wheel of Life" which I think you mean as the structure of life itself. You interpret the dead eye as the inevitability of death, yet you accept that death as part of life. As you say, we can't escape from this eye. In the end, all of us will die. Because of this, your guilt over eating fish is eased. In any event, this image, through its detail, has triggered a series of profound thoughts within Nut, and that is exactly what I intended to do when I made it in this way.

nut		26-Dec-2004 20:19
"The Wheel of Life" The point is I love fish the most. I born in the south of Thailand. The sea is about 5 kilometers away from my house. The river is about 1 kilometers from my house either. No wonder why my main menu is fish. If I don't eat then I am not grow up in this way. Do I feel guilty when I saw this photo? Yes, I do. What can I do to make me feel less guilty is to pray for all single of life that I took away from all fishes. The matter in what I pray is about "The Wheel of Life". This mean "The Wheel of Life" to me. I am outside the net. So I am not the witness but fish. The dead eye look at me in this way is to blame me or not? I said "NO". No feeling inside and no life. The eye didn't blame me, but this eye tell me about life. The net is the blocking, the incarceration of life (to be born, to get old, to be sick and to dead). We all can't get out or walk away from this soon or later. And the dead eyes told me this.

Phil Douglis		11-Dec-2004 20:32
Clara, you have a way of summing up the great truths in very few words. "We need blood." What better phrase to define the meaning of this picture? What have these tuna done to deserve this end? That is the question I ask though this image and this detail. The viewer will have to answer for himself or herself.

Guest		11-Dec-2004 19:46
I admit I eat products of animal origin, but images like this one tells me how cruel we are humans, so-called rational beings, to still get our food from other lives unnecessarily. I was a vegetarian between my 18 and my 30 years old, and I have never been more healthy than then. No wonder we are not still past the age of wars and unequality. We need blood.

Phil Douglis		30-Nov-2004 22:21
Thanks, Loretta, for the kind words you leave for me here. I sometimes feel that it is my mission in life to comb the world for tiny details that express ideas and then call them to the attention of others. It is not as easy as it might seem -- you have to discipline the eye (pun intended) to see selectively, and then make the camera see selectively as well. I do that here by moving in with it, eventually bringing you, Loretta, eyeball to eyeball with a dead tuna on an Ecuadorian pier.

Loretta		22-Nov-2004 22:29
Phil, "Tuna's Eye" is amazing "seeing." In the hustle and bustle of that marketplace and the full net, you were able to see such an arresting detail. Such is the talent that comes from a lifetime of devotion to your art (and craft).

Lara S		10-Feb-2004 18:58
I looked at "Inquistive Horse" great photo as well. I do like how you moved back to get the photo.

Phil Douglis		07-Feb-2004 20:39
You have a wonderfully weird imagination, Lara. (That's why you are a photographer, right?) If you want to see a horse looking through a gate, I have that for you as well at:http://www.worldisround.com/articles/22018/photo6.html .

Lara S		07-Feb-2004 04:22
and I wanted to see a horse looking through a gate. weird huh? :)

Phil Douglis		26-Jan-2004 23:04
Thank you, Likyin, for this wonderful observation. We read what we want to read into a picture. You wanted to see live fish, so they lived -- at least until you read my caption. You are correct -- words and pictures must work as partners if we are to communicate with pictures. Photographic artists, on the other hand, often need no words at all with their images, because what happens inside of each viewer's own mind is probably the most important aspect of their art.

Guest		26-Jan-2004 11:07
I thought that they were still alive and jumping and struggling... so that I was amazed that you could make the shot so clear. and then I began reading the information you put bellow it. So, how important it is the caption to an image? Also, Life is a mystery.

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