Why Photograph? Chapter 2

So I have asked - why photograph?

I have searched. Under the bed, inside my head, between the leaves of books, of trees, my life, hoping the magic answer would fall upon me.....

And then, one day, it did. Fall upon me. With almost no bumps on my scull...

I was talking with someone outside of blip about my photography. He was very nice to me. Called my pics raw communication. But he was also curious as to my intentions. What it was I wanted to express.

At first I said, you tell me...

Then I decided to go on a tour of my mind. Literally walk the little lanes of the brain.

I thought, the photo of Ingrid, that´s where I can find it. The answer, I mean.

- There is something here that I am particularly happy about, I said. A quality about Ingrid you don´t necessarily see at first glance, but which is there all the same.
- Her shyness? he said.
- Yeeeessss and nooooo, I said. Something more lasting. Something more than her many sides. More than her laughter and shyness. Something beneath these qualities.

I really had to walk those brain lanes, not to fall into clichés, not to lean on some preconceived ideas.

Then, in an instant I saw the answer. Presenting itself as a giant birch right in the middle of the path. And though it might sound clichéd, preconceived and very obvious, to me it was a revelation.

- I long to see that which is there for ever and ever, but which is only visible in the fleeting moment, I said. I am hunting the eternal and the constant in the now. I am listening for the common heart that beats and beats, whether we cry or laugh or run or make the dinner, the clock that ticks and ticks but is completely still at the same time. I am looking for the LARGE in the very very small. Timelessness in time itself. The familiar in the foreign. The visible in that which cannot be seen.

- I am hunting that which cannot be hunted down, I said. Yet I try. Again. And again. And again.

So there. I had a glimpse of the answer. I´m at photo peace :-)

At last.


But then there is this. Being off-blip for a while, I went to the journals to write response yesterday. I looked for Scorpionkiss. For Cairo. For that exotic place which is so familiar to me now. Through Matt and Diptych´s photos I have come to recognize the people on those streets. They are not so foreign to me after all. They are not so different.

But he is gone. Because of time. I will not start a discussion, I only want to say that to me he is timeless. Without borders. To me, he captures the eternal in the now.

I dedicate this post to him. And to Diptych.

The frozen, empty bench says it all.