Jurgenson, in Documentary Vision, addresses the intrinsic conflict in photography- that it ". . . plays on the tension between the momentary and the forever" (50).
I see the momentary as the now that's about to be the past. The present moment which is consumed with the act of photographing it, ". . . a frozen shutter-speed-size slice of the present captured within a border" (45).
The forever is an attempt to transform the now into an always. An acknowledgement of the inevitability of change, that the now is over as it begins.
Jurgenson calls this process magical, "By transgressing time, such photos transgress death. The magic of an image is in how it arrests the rules of time"(45). I somewhat understand this: the hope of extending oneself past life, the nostalgia of what wasn't always so far away.
However, this week I wanted to capture the flip side of the momentary and the forever. When I see photos from the long past I do not see nostalgia, I do not have rose-colored-glasses. I see a past that is irretrievable, and thus painful to perceive. Proof of someone who was alive before, of days that apparently occurred, but make no difference to me in the now. The physical reminders of these times-past feel taunting to me. They feel unnatural, I wish they would rot like the other dead things.
I tried to capture this in my post this week. I took pictures of the physical photos I have, which depict someone who isn't around anymore. I edited them to try to make them look the way them feel to me- rotten, fake, unwelcome, abrasive. Maybe it's bitter or unsavory, but it does fit the theme.
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