The myth of the moment

It’s a central, time-honoured concept that the act of photographic creation happens in a brief moment of time. The idea pervades artistic statements, critical essays, the very language we use to describe our activity as photographers. ‘The moment it clicks’, we say.

A closer look at this idea of the moment raises some interesting questions. Do we perceive this ‘moment’, do we dwell in it in any substantial sense? If my exposure is for one second (not uncommon in my large format practice), I think so. What of 1/10 of a second? Scientists say I am able to, in part because of the speed at which the human perceptual system works. What of 1/60, or 1/125? Now I am not so sure …. 

Somebody might object that it depends on what we mean by dwelling in or being conscious of a certain moment, as against the brute act of perceiving at a subconscious level. Nevertheless, when we speak of intention, we speak of knowing. To question the extent to which we dwell in the moment we press the shutter severs the link between intention and execution. In a curious sense we cannot claim to intend a photograph - at least not wholly - if we cannot claim to be aware of the moment in time of its creation.

For me a photograph is both what a photographer intends and more than that. There is in every act of photographic creation an excess of recording, of visual detail and meaning, that exceeds what the photographer ‘sees’. I find this an enticing more than a damaging prospect; a reason for, rather than against, further inquiry. If the ‘moment’ of the shutter press turns out to be a myth, then it is another way into this interface, this play between intention and meaning that is the photograph.

The photographer as collector (or, my camera collection is safe ... for now)

What are photographers if not collectors? I’m not entirely sure what it is that they collect: memories, maybe, visual imprints from the world, the action of light on objects, the list goes on.

I read an editorial this week promoting the virtues of reducing one’s worldly possessions. It’s a familiar refrain of today: throw out the things you’ve not used in a year and you will be lighter physically and emotionally. Continue to live life with this philosophy and you will be happier.

Please take this blog entry with a piece of salt, for I am an inveterate hoarder. I do wonder, however, whether there isn’t something very deep-rooted in our desire to keep stuff. Objects help to build our identities and foster memories. They offer a sense of touch, sight and smell that can trigger Proustian moments. Many we associate with particular times in our lives, and some we are compelled to keep through the social contract of the gift.

I wonder if this compulsion doesn’t connect to a much bigger cultural endeavour: the attempt to vanquish our mortality. It is often said that our museums and galleries are simply repositories of efforts to produce something that will out-live - and therefore mark the existence of - their makers. Statues are clearly commemorative and self-aggrandising, but what if a whole gamut of cultural objects weren’t essentially doing the same thing? Does not what we do on a small level in our homes echo this social compulsion to leave a mark? To postpone the inevitable?

It is true that, like many photographers, I have an somewhat unwieldy collection of cameras. I might not exactly be looking for a grand justification to keep them, but, perhaps with the above in mind, I might postpone any drastic cull for a little longer.

Photographing without a camera

The couple sit in silence. Both sit upright, almost uncomfortably so. They look not at each other but straight ahead. Into the cafe, perhaps, or out of the windows beyond. Or into that space of daydream focus: neither near nor far. No words are exchanged between them. Their silence is that of a couple who know each other so intimately as to need no words. Their understanding and togetherness is a priori.

I imagine framing them. I think about the 35mm frame, with a crop to suggest a near panoramic view. I imagine them both looking into the distance, to the viewer and beyond. I really like the idea of accentuating the space between them: I want to emphasise the distance in their togetherness. It would be my job to ensure that no uninvited objects creep into the frame. The view should be clean and clinical, the background plain, continuous. Their postures should dominate. If I am lucky I might catch a moment when they both simultaneously raise a coffee cup. Together in silence, mirroring one another, yet somewhere else.

This is a photograph I have seen and not made. It is an exercise in visualisation, a fine image that I didn’t make. Sometimes I enjoy making pictures as much without a camera as with.

Photography and ritual

Turn. Turn. Turn. Turn. Put down with a little jolt. Wait. 

My hands leave the developing tank and my mind is wandering. I have the time in focus, no question, but I’m starting to think about what I’m doing. I’m starting to see a parallel between developing a film and something else.

Place the record down. Start the platter. Gently run the carbon fibre brush over the record. Lean it forward, lean it back, draw it outwards. Set the needle down. Adjust the volume. Adjust headphones. Adjust the volume again.

Listening to a vinyl record is undoubtedly an act full of ritual. As the old joke goes, vinyl is desirable both for its high cost and inconvenience. That ‘inconvenience’ brings a set of actions that become inseparable from the listening experience. The ritual is inseparable from the listening experience.

I wonder if film is similarly ‘inconvenient’. In the sense that, it demands a series of preparatory actions (in my example, development) that become an integral part of how we experience it. It is frequently said that film photographs feel ‘made’ (and I haven’t mentioned darkroom yet). Preparatory actions become ritualistic. Little rituals we enact that prolong and intensify our experience of a medium. Little rituals we do with our own little touches and personal ways.

Does digital photography involve rituals? Probably, and to some extent. Yet I notice the rituals of my use of film much more readily. Is it an accident that in my parallel vinyl is an analogue medium? It’s hard to see the same pertaining to playing an MP3. 

Do analogue lovers have an affinity for ritual? My guess is they do.
 

The marvellous Faraday lines of photography

“Light is thus nothing more than a rapid vibration of the spiderweb of Faraday’s lines, which ripple like the surface of a lake as the wind blows. It isn’t true that we ‘do not see’ Faraday lines. We only see vibrating lines. ‘To see’  is to perceive light, and light is the movement of Faraday lines. Nothing leaps from one location in space to another without something transporting it. If we see a child playing on the beach, it is only because between them and ourselves there is this lake of vibrating lines which transport their image to us. Is the world not marvellous?”

— Carlo Rovelli

Please excuse the somewhat lengthy quotation, which comes from Carlo Rovelli’s enchanting book Reality is Not What it Seems. I am not a scientist, but I do enjoy reading popular science books, and often find myself wondering (as in, seeing with wonderment) at the links between photography and the wider physical world.

Rovelli is writing about the electromagnetic spectrum, and more specifically the theories of Michael Faraday. His musings come in the context of a discussion of our commonplace understanding of the physical world, and how modern science has come to turn that understanding on its head. Looked at another way, Rovelli is marvelling at the action of light; he is addressing the simple poetry of the essential role of light in perception. And what is photography if not a kind of fossil which confirms this action? An indexical sign, as the semiologists have it, an imprint made by the physical action of light. Photography is a poetic confirmation of the existence of Faraday’s lines, of the action of the electromagnetic spectrum, and subsequently of our humble place in a much, much larger physical universe. 

To complement Rovelli’s words, then, I offer what I can, a photograph. It came out of a moment on the hoof: the camera was there, around my neck, and my son began to speak to me about his painted fingernails. I asked him to put his hands in mine, part listening, as a parent does sometimes, and I made the exposure.

The photograph is my record of this little exchange, this fleeting and intimate moment. Perhaps photography needs no such association with physics to be marvellous and poetic; reading Rovelli, however, I cannot help but think his words add even more gravitas. As a document of my life, the image is surely meaningful, and even profound, for me. Yet when I think of the Rovelli passage, I find its profundity only grows further. The physical universe is indifferent to us (as I suppose the medium of photography truly is) but science continues to make strides in setting out its enormity and complexity. To truly understand the physical effect at work in a photograph is to begin an enquiry into structures which dwarf our existence. Photography in itself has many wondrous qualities. By extending our thinking through physics, it evokes even more.

More about Rovelli's book can be found through this link:

The mundane time machine

We make many kinds of photograph. There are our artistic endeavours, aspirational, serious, representative - if at all possible - of what kind of photographer we want to be. There are family photos, and photos to document things for practical purposes. Then there are the photos we make just because we feel like photographing. I rarely get much aesthetic joy with the latter if I’m honest, because generally the right subject and light are absent. I’ve just picked up the camera because I feel like doing photography.

The photograph in front of me is a most inauspicious one: it shows the side of a bath (in gaudy 1980s turquoise), a shower curtain, a cloth, a stretch of red patterned carpet, and the bottom of a door. Whilst looking at it, I am transported, partially if not fully and literally, to Morcambe, England circa 2000. It is a thoroughly mundane image, arguably of little aesthetic value and not an image possessed of public currency. Yet it depicts a space that I knew intimately, a space from my childhood and rich with memories of holidays at the seaside and of growing up. Like the Proustian trigger, it sets off a chain of associative memories and feelings. A most unremarkable photo and yet a poignant and fulsome personal one. An incidental thing and somehow a representative one.

Giving this further thought, I begin to wonder if the image is not all the more powerful for being incidental and mundane. Had it been a carefully constructed documentary shot of one of my grandparents’ rooms (for it is taken at their house), or a family ‘moment’, of the officially sanctioned happy family occasion kind, would it be quite so evocative?

Doubtless this is a personal perspective on a specific image, but it does point to a category of personal photography we might single out. Apparently incidental and mundane shots of small details that months, years or even decades later become thoroughly evocative and memory-laiden. 

I have always been interested in the historical nature of the photograph. It is a fact of photography that it always represents what has been (even if that moment is as close to us as a few seconds ago). Without wishing to romanticise the fact, photography acts something like a little time machine for our individual experiences. I think there are different kinds of images that do this; or, to put it differently, images that evoke memory through different mechanisms and lines of association.

My little meditation today provokes in me a modest resolution. A resolution to, every now and again, train my camera on some mundane but especially familiar object or corner of my life. A little visual message to my future self and a catalyst for memory.