“By turning away the essential opposition between the temporality of the text and the spatiality of the image, the interdisciplinary reading of photography has created an internal subdivision between two types of pictures: on the one hand, pictures capable of being read within a temporal (or even narrative and fictional) prospective, and on the other hand, pictures where this temporal dimension is simply not relevant. And although the frontiers between both categories are always shifting, the mere acceptance of this difference is hazardous, since it sneakily reintroduces a kind of essential difference between time and space that the interdisciplinary approach of photography should question more radically.”

n o n t e m p o r a l   t h i n g s ,  t e m p o r a l l y

things I’m trying to say-

“Each new occurence of interdisciplinary research crudely reveals the limits of all other language. and of course taking into account the image itself as a thought- and knowledge-producing device can only intensify our attention towards everything that escapes or exceeds verbal language. Visual thinking is not only the lesson one can draw from the contact of words and images in photographic research. Why not turn the argument around and observe that whatever the obstacles may be, images do manage to say something, whereas words do not necessarily fail to do the same?…The very fact that the interdisciplinary intermingling of words and images in our discourses on photography only seems to enhance our faith in the impossibility of representation may be seen as a paradoxical invitation to go beyond this difficulty and to search for clarity…Why not consider our new commitment to interdisciplinarity and the new relationships between words and images an attempt to speak nevertheless?”

from Conceptual Limitations of Our Reflection on Photography: the Question of “Interdisciplinarity”—Jan Baetens

(Source: amazon.com)

There’s a phrase I’ve been repeating to myself

“non-temporal things, temporally”

i want to trademark that.

which I think is a good description of my world: stepping out of time a minute, but still maintaining awareness of the fact that it was/always is passing.

the fleeting moment is the amount of time it takes to turn the page.

that one too

and I spend significantly less time per page I think than most of my peers do, in some cases and sometimes when I’m walking through a museum or a gallery I intentionally linger or am more conscious of the amount of time I’m taking to examine

“now look at this detail and that one and, oh, this area here.” i’m on to the next room already and, look, they’ve hardly even made it past that wall

In certain settings the act of looking feels a little more contrived,

———- and if left to my own devices, I would remain in a “”static state of drifting” through these spaces,” and from one image to the next, and going back. I don’t always know what I’m looking at until I see it in the context of the rest of things I’ve seen.

(Source: ninaperlman.com)

“Human intimacy may be among the most difficult things to capture photographically.”

I began reading an article by Darsie Alexander, “Nan Goldin: The Hug, New York City, 1980,” for my Photo class and this line, the opening, struck me at once.  Then I reached the bottom of that same paragraph:

“For better or worse, a camera locks even the most temporary relationships into permanence, capturing their momentary intensity with a decisive and intrusive click.”

Through the duration of my time reading—the rest of this article as well as through the Sontag article I also had to read—I couldn’t get that notion out of my mind.  In the past 5 or so years, I have consistently photographed my relationships.  Long-term or fleeting, close or distant, or some confusing mix of all four, I strive to document the important moments. 

I like to think that these images serve as memento of something I, or someone in my life, once felt.  However, I wonder if I am the only one who can.  I wonder if, perhaps, it is the associations I have placed on an image after-the-fact that hold the emotion or intimacy of the moment, rather than the photograph itself.

When it comes to relationships of all kinds, I tend to be idealistic. This often leads incredible stubbornness on my part.  Relationships are fluid.  They wax and wane and shift constantly, but the emotions contained in a photograph, for me, are static.  Often I have chosen to capture a moment for the sole reason that, subconsciously or not, I want it to last.  When they don’t in real life, they do in the photograph.

But the second quote raises an interesting, yet somewhat disturbing question.  The click of the shutter is described as “intrusive.”  Something that interrupts, disturbs unwantedly, interferes.  Were I to not seek out documentation of the moment, a static “artificial” preservation, would the real-life emotion or intimacy, in fact, last longer in real life?

Though I’m not sure that the simple click of a shutter could really alter the unfolding of events in that way, I certainly believe it’s true that the act of observing a phenomenon changes it.  Looking through the lens of my camera, in that instant I am no longer an active participant in the emotion.  I am an observer. The relationship has changed. In an honest attempt to hold the moment together, I have pulled away from that same moment.  And the moment has passed.  It’s a thought that I’ve been struggling with for a while.