The Photographer Speaks Candidly

 

Where it all begins, I suspect, is the “snapshot.” Whether family photo album, yourself messy-faced in diapers and high-chair, exotic postcards or history books – that strange “a-ha!” instigated by the similitude of the unknown or misremembered. The “whap” of what you imagine you’ve seen, fantasized, dreamt or been, suddenly presented to you as an instant, an image.

“Stealing a glimpse” kind of thing. A centuries-past wedding, the Rockies in sepia, a Hindu temple, your sister as a baby – the mystery of it, the magic! That first plastic camera, disposable and durable, that I used like a weapon as a boy. Bam! Bam! Blam! – my toe, my dog, the playground sand. Blast! Wham! Crack! – got you candy wrapper! Beetle! Back of daddy’s head!

What wonder, no? The outlaw Jesse James – preserved! The Eiffel Tower! Existed then, exists now, because of this contraption, this mad science. Africa, India, colors and clothing, languages, beliefs and cultures – perhaps! perhaps! – someone must have really been there – and something! – the camera may be able to lie, but it cannot create matter, substance! It records moments, minutes, on battlefields, of cheetahs, camels and pyramids!

I had a grandpa! Or I didn’t, but here’s a possible one – detached from his family of origin – available image – who really occurred – could be mine – you see?

For all the skewing of this miniscule eye…the fragile lens…the limiting range and frame, the delicate settings and the passage of time – in only a couple of centuries (as testament to its early stimulus and fascination) – our world has been literally flooded with these fragments. Images. Perhaps rivaling the entire history of visual arts, save writing, no?

So to start, it is enthrallment. Magic, mystery, forbidden, anonymous, it appeals to everything in human youth: the impossible! To experience – perhaps to capture! To seek – to startle – to freeze – to kill.

To take the photo. To grasp the image. To snap the shot. To keep the memory, its stimulus. In the blink of an eye.

I’ve never stopped.