“It’s not just the meaning of the image that has changed – the act of looking does not have the same meaning. Now, it’s about showing, sending and maybe remembering. It is no longer essentially about the image. The image for me was always linked to the idea of uniqueness, to a frame and to composition. You produced something that was, in itself, a singular moment. As such, it had a certain sacredness. That whole notion is gone.”
I don’t know what to think about this really. I’m not a serious photographer and I think I always saw my own photos as something to show, send “and maybe remember”. I have very few photos from when I was young, partly because it was expensive to make them in those days and I didn’t have much money, partly because whatever photos I did take (or others took of me), I sent to people, enclosed in letters (another cultural artifact that has more surely gone than singular images). But I do share the sorrow expressed in this article about the loss of a sense of the sacredness of the image. And I do love the idea of this exhibition of polaroids (or, rather, its catalogue) as “a storybook more than a photo book”.
You can also see my friends’ Wordless Wednesday photos at:
Wunderkamera 