I wonder, what moves us to take photographs? Do we hope to
seize the past, compose narratives, transform memory into something tangible?
Are we trying to make evidence of events, capture the real, hold something up
as ‘truth’? In many instances, taking a photograph is all of these things.
Tourists in particular are good at this. Evidence. Narrative. Memories.
Beyond holiday snapshots, though, the eye is important. You
have to see something first. You
sense possibility, respond to, perhaps, the potential in the light, the colour,
the composition. The photographer imagines how reality could be, not just how
it is.
Some of my favourite things to photograph are everyday
objects that have been set apart from the mundane, often by a trick of light. I
can crave an image, like a predator who sets sights on its prey, tracks it
and then cages it. Yet it’s not a sinister act. Although it is one of
ownership. Control. Desire.
Chairs. I photographed the chairs. I found them beautiful. But to my friend they were no doubt quite ordinary. ‘I never would have
photographed that’, he said, mystified. But when he saw how they were lit up in
the photograph, he too loved what he saw.
In this way, photography is far from being a simple
representation of reality. When we select a subject, choose the exposure, angle
the camera, zoom in, it is an interpretation of what is real. We are a filter.
When we delete an image, reposition the lens and take another shot – one we
prefer, for whatever reason – we are imposing ourselves upon the image.
What to me seems certain is that the image takes on a life
of its own, beyond the first view with the naked eye, beyond the prosaic
reality of being stacked and empty chairs in a theatre. The composition may be
identical, but we are left with an image of an image of an image…
