My approach, while influenced by Richter, feels slightly different. I believe he uses distortion and blurring as a way of making the observer look deeper, beyond the surface.
So far, I have been thinking of these ideas (ie, blurring) as a way of emphasising difference. That is to say, to create a difference between the contained, hard-edged reality of commuting and the unfocused nature of everything else – basically, the life on the other side of the train window.
Commuters exist in sealed units. They cannot focus on other things when they are commuting. The rest of life is blurred, unreal – and yet it is life...alive, varied, rich. In comparison, their hard-edged days must be tiresome.
Commuters exist in sealed units. They cannot focus on other things when they are commuting. The rest of life is blurred, unreal – and yet it is life...alive, varied, rich. In comparison, their hard-edged days must be tiresome.
