I am a writer and express myself in words, always words (millions of words… I thanked Nicola last night for being patient with me while I processed something, and she laughed and said, Darling, if I couldn’t cope with processing we would have split up nineteen years ago). But when it comes to events in the real world, I often like them better expressed in pictures. There’s something about photographs — their power to capture a real person in a real moment (or a not-so-real moment), the sense of being there — that I find compelling.
If I want to learn about an experience, deepen my understanding of it, I’ll go read about it. But often what I want is to know how it felt. The best photographs dissolve the barriers of space and time and bring me straight into the moment, the immediate there-and-then. Novels and stories put me into the moments too, of course, but they are a process. Probably why I do them (grin). Words take me into myself: photos take me bang! straight into other places.
I grew up with LIFE magazine. In my day, LIFE and National Geographic were the pinnacles of photographic journalism — information and story crystallized into a single arresting image, or series of images. Humans, the world, stillness and motion, life and death, the majestic and the ridiculous — moments of real life that will never come again, but we can see them. In pictures.
I’m still puzzling through my response to photos. I must say that mostly, other people’s vacation pictures and endless wedding photos don’t really do much for me. My wedding photos feel special to me, in part because they were taken by our friend Mark, also a writer, someone who knows how to tell stories in pictures and in words. But even so, I don’t expect them to be special to other people (grin). Mostly, I find my own life as captured in photos less compelling than the real thing. But good photographers record the story, not just the image, and there are some stories of my life that I wish very much I could have such a clear, true record of. That would take me back bang! to the there-and-then. Just for a visit. Just for a moment.