a dream i had

Does a photograph tell the whole story? Or does it just reveal a slice of a truth that is revealing itself to the photographer at that particular instant? Maybe it’s not a truth at all; instead a mixture of the photographer’s perceptions, projections and ideals. It’s easy to look at a photo and believe it, and believe that the photographer was simply trying to capture or describe a moment. But when you think about it, about all the choices that have to be made before, during and after a picture is taken, all the complexities that define the person taking the picture, and the relationship of that person to the subject being photographed, it becomes possible to imagine that a photograph is actually a statement about who the photographer is.

I had a dream last night that I had to spend the day walking through my world with a huge assembly of other shooters. And it wasn’t just a normal day. At every turn, at every moment, there was a glorious photographic opportunity. In the dream, we whipped out our cameras in unison and began to record the incredible scenes and people that were unfolding before our disbelieving eyes. The light was perfect, too. No one spoke – there was no chatter about shutter speeds, ISO ratings, or even mega pixels. It was eerily calm as this throng of photographers quietly and thoughtfully made personal decisions about framing, whether to focus or not, whether to shoot from above or below, to tilt the camera or keep it straight, to use a flash or natural light - things like that (not to mention whether or not to give directions to the subject). We were men and women from different parts of the world, old and young, many different colors and religions, rich and poor. I found myself getting frustrated, and I finally put my camera away.

I guess I was afraid that my photographs would ultimately look like everyone else’s.

But when I awoke in a sweat, I had to remind myself that that’s not really possible. We each see things through our own set of lenses. And these are colored by our own struggles, pain, conflicts and joys. The good news about this seemingly tortured dream is that every photo taken by this collection of shooters would have been different. The variations may have been small, perhaps even difficult to detect. But they would have been meaningful, and they would, in the end, tell a story about who was positioned behind the camera. Maybe that’s really what the “whole story” is all about.

Finding one’s voice as an artist is hard.

It’s also what makes doing this, day after day, an exhilarating process of self-discovery.