One early Saturday this past summer I found myself waking up before dawn with only two things in mind. As usual coffee was the first, however the second was photography. I wanted to explore, search and find uncommon subjects out of my usual daily perspective. So I set off into the 5 am darkness and drove north, my coffee as my companion.
Dawn quickly approached so I parked in a popular urban spot of a nearby town. The fresh cloudless sky inspired me to focus my attention on photographing minimalistic style images.
As I walked around the empty streets I found that a festival was scheduled to begin that afternoon. There were several merchants preparing their pop up tent shops and displays. I noticed a very weathered iron black handrail on a set of concrete steps on the side of an old building so I dropped down to frame the shot in a lower perspective and behind me I heard a Man’s voice from across the street. In a slightly harassing tone, “Hey Buddy, What’s with all the photos?!”
Naturally I stood and turned but my mind suddenly went blank. Perhaps it was because this was the first human interaction of my day, perhaps it was the tone of this mans voice, but in some ways I felt somewhat wounded by those spoken words.
So, now that some time has passed I’d like to answer that question.
Photography goes much further than a camera, an image still or moving. Photography is much like a memory. The way one sees their surroundings imagines the things they care about or remember from the past. During the long hours of the day our minds may be focused on our actions, but images of our loved ones or even what we plan on having for dinner, that TV show you can’t wait to see or that upcoming vacation flashes in our minds. Photography is documenting life around us. Even if the subjects are posed for the image, the time and light is still documented. Everything we have ever seen or will ever see has been influenced by photography at some point.
So to question the motive of photography is in many ways to question human vision and imagination, without the method of capturing light and time our memories would fade and our past would be lost.