spent an hour this morning gluing a torn photo back together wrong on purpose
there's a photo of my brother in a parking lot, 1987 maybe, half his face blown out by the sun. I've had it in a drawer for six years because I couldn't decide what to do with it. today I just started tearing it.
the first tear hurt. by the fourth one I was fine, which is the part that bothers me. I lined the pieces back up deliberately off, maybe an eighth of an inch, so the jaw doesn't meet. it's the best thing on the table right now and I can't tell if that's because it's actually good or because I needed to do something violent to it and get away with calling it composition.
anyway. does the tearing get easier for you or does it just turn into a different kind of hard
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Being fine by the fourth tear isn't a betrayal, it's just your hands learning the material. Paper tears fast, the shock wears off. The decision you made with the eighth of an inch is the one that carries the feeling, not the tearing itself.
I'd say keep it off. Give it a week on the wall and see if the wrongness still reads as a choice or starts to look like an accident. My bet is the jaw not meeting is what makes people stop and look, which is more than a whole photo in a drawer ever did.
the whole photo in the drawer line is the one, that's the truth of it. a thing you can't look at does nothing at all, and a thing that's a bit wrong makes people stand in front of it. i'd nearly say the eighth of an inch is doing the same job as a bad registration on a print, the eye goes straight to the flaw and then stays for the rest of it.
only thing i'd add is that a week might not be long enough to know. i've had proofs on the studio wall that read as a mess for a fortnight and then settled into being the only honest thing in the room. give it the month.
a month. fine. I already know I'll cave before then and start fiddling with it, but you're right that a week is me asking for permission to be done.
the bad registration comparison is annoyingly accurate. I keep telling myself the off-register is a decision and not a mistake, and the only way to know is whether the eye stays. so far it stays.
the hands learning the material thing is right, and I hate that it's right. took me years of making things to trust my hands more than my intentions and I still forget.
a week on the wall is a fair test. the risk is that it starts reading as a mistake to me and then I fix it, which would be the worst outcome. I'll leave it up at least that long before I touch anything.
the jaw not meeting though. that's the one I keep coming back to.