A moment in time....

A moment in time is an elastic concept. Photography is assumed to represent a real moment in time, there was an actual exposure of light on silver, dye, or a digital receptor. Every Sunday the Fairbanks paper shows a historic photograph. Many times I take off my glasses, old eyes, and look at the details. It is the details at that moment in time that reveals what it was like back then.

Of course we all know that a photograph, even in the old days is an abstraction and subject to manipulation and deception, but what makes it fascinating is that sense of a moment in time. If the illusion of the moment in time is snapped the tension of photography is lost. It is not wrong, just a different experience that can be beautiful and revealing, but different.

Editing a picture, for instance removing power lines, alters the moment in time, but perhaps not too much, unless, for instance, a person is interested in the history of power distribution. A wedding photograph that removes all the character from a face is also messing with a moment in time. In my photography I will edit and enhance, but I do not want to severe the moment in time. I want people to be able, in 20 or 30 years, to see and experience the historic moment.

A moment in time is an elastic concept but at a certain point the photographic process is being used as pigment, the elastic has snapped, and the result, while it can be beautiful and expressive, is no longer photography.