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« To develop a revelation  »



I’ve spent half my life photographing, and now I’m being asked what photography is. And I don’t know how to answer. I like what Flusser says. Although, perhaps, any answer seems fine. None stands out. None is more valid. I’ve spent half my life photographing, looking at the world through the viewfinder of my Canon.

Now I aim to create an image with my own hands, a revelation. A negative, which could be ephemeral. The positive in cyanotype, though I might not do it. Cyanotype, presented as a photographic technique: no camera, no eye, no frame of reference for reality.

What is a photograph?

I wish I could place a mountain on my emulsion-coated paper and cyanotype a landscape, breaking reality.

.
.
A flash of light strikes my pupils, resting as my eyelids cover them.
That instant of light jolts me awake.
Violent. Physical.
There is no light when I open my eyes.

Even if I have seen it.
Even if I have felt it.
Even if I have reacted.
I wonder if this is what Juliana felt when God appeared to her. Revealed Himself to her. Perhaps she called it a vision, perhaps she didn’t even question that what she saw, what she felt, was an illusion, a hallucination. Others would say it was. I can call mine nightmare. Dream. Hallucination. Vision. Revelation. Photography.

To develop a revelation.