For me, photography is about capturing the moment.
One of the things that really marked me when I saw Blade Runner when I was a kid was Roy Batty’s speech at the end of the film: “I’ve seen things… You people wouldn’t believe. […] All these moments will be lost in time” (let’s ignore the debate about whether these are real human feelings, that’s not the point here) This is the sentiment I have when I take photos. Even mundane ones.
It doesn’t matter what kind of photos you take, landscapes, portraits, studio, street, even family snaps, it’s always about fixing a moment that will never happen again and that you might be the only human being to witness.
When I’m at a location, on my own, early in the morning, in silence, I feel that I’m the only human being seeing what I see. Others will see something similar at some point, but it won’t be the same moment. The clouds will be different; the light will be different; the traces in the sand will be different, the noise will be different. The same applies when I do astrophotography: I tend to be interested by things that are rarely imaged and in some cases have only been seen by a handful of humans throughout history.
When I look at old family photos, for example my great-grand-mother holding my baby dad by the hand in the early 50s, I wonder: what were they all thinking? Was it a posed photo? Did they feel it was a nuisance? Did they have a good breakfast on that day? Was the weather good? Was there wind? All these components make that moment unique and the photo is the last remaining witness.
Of course, photography is only part of the witness complex: it records part of reality and leaves out a lot. It’s limited as a visual representation. In most cases it won’t answer any of the questions above. The other part is the photographer. Together they record the moment, naturally occurring or manufactured, it’s not important.
In that sense, photography is undiscernible from the photographer, and once the link is broken, the moment is lost and the photo is only an ersatz of what the witness complex used to be. The photo can jolt memory of the moment but only for the photographer. No one else gets the same effect, even though some might get some of it, for example people that were present at the time the photo was taken. Isn’t it in the end what wedding photography is? Or family photography? Or journalistic photography?
Does that mean that photos can only be shared as washed down representatives of something greater, a gateway to something that no longer exists and can never be reached? Maybe sharing photos is pointless and can only be done on an aesthetic level. Anything deeper is impossible. Maybe photography can only be a personal endeavour destined to remain misunderstood.
Maybe I’ve talked myself into never showing a photo again.
#Photography #PhotographyTheory #Theory #Personal