With Your Mouth Open

Posted on June 14, 2007 in Photography

The map is not the land and a photo is neither map nor land but a third place beyond occupation, hanging on a wall or projected from a website. What makes an outstanding photo memorable often denies the person words other than “Hey, that’s The Thing.” The best photos — and I am thinking of the works of [[Edward Weston]] for one example — mostly depict a combination that is unnameable:

Neither this nor this have much to “say” for themselves, but there is no doubt that it shoots you in the eye. They are not the place nor a legend of the place. The vicinity of the actual location is much too crowded with scenery to make an impression beyond the multitudinous. The photographer is a cake cutter, lining up the squares in a new frieze where the activity is not centaurs and their wenches. It’s the wrinkles of the planet, a seized up affair.

You cannot pretend that the photo is a voice without sounding like a penny philosopher yet it apprehends you, pauses your reality, agitates the cones of your eyes in such a way that a stillness like that of a predator freezes upon the turning earth, denying you sense of its rotation because of your oneness with the particular. You comprehend it with a faculty other than language. It disturbs you and makes you glad for the interruption.

One who does not view a photo with one’s mouth open, does not grasp the picture.