Why I love looking at photographs?

April 11, 2008

"Behind the Gare St. Lazare" by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Why I love looking at photographs?

My first reaction to a question like this is to think about what gets my attention when I first see an image. The response is actually quite simple: quality of the composition, quality of the subject and the quality of the moment. Even if this sounds as a cliché, it is not more than that. Yes, composition includes in itself a large number of important aspects of a photograph but for simplicity I just refer to them as one.

Technically, composition describes the two dimensional mapping of the light reflected by the different objects onto the final photograph. Composition is what makes me look at the image, relates the subject with the context and puts the image in perspective to the purpose of the photograph. Composition refers to the "space" of the image, how the three dimensions of our surroundings are placed within the unnatural perspective of two dimensions. This mapping in two dimensions is what adds a unique quality to the image: a way of seeing, how the photographer looked and saw.

The quality of the subject, is one aspect of the photograph that has large subjective connotations. Not all the subjects are interesting to everyone but, the subjects in the photograph are a critical component affecting the "impact" of the image. The subject/s is often times what drives most of the emotional response from the viewer. Subjects that make me wonder, subjects that make my laugh, subjects that make me cry, will define the "impact" of the photograph, my reaction to it. Make no mistake here, quality of the subject in a photograph does not relate to the importance of the subject within the framework of our cultural rules. A mundane object can be a more interesting subject that a human being in a photograph.

The quality of the moment, is what Henri Cartier-Bresson called "The Decisive Moment". We perceive life as a continuous experience, and by doing so, we rarely see "the decisive moments". Our every day life is an average of unlimited instants. They pass in front of us, and they are left behind our memory before we even realize that they happened. Photography, by being a recording of just one instant, becomes a window to see what we can't see. Like the skillful surgeon, now we have the scalpel [the camera] to dissect time, and to select the moments in life that define the most powerful experience. The quality of the moment has powerful influence in my reaction to the photograph.

After all this writing I realize that I have not answered the question I was analyzing. Why I love looking at photographs?

I love looking at photographs because photography gives me a vision of the world that I would otherwise miss. It is not only about the image itself, it is about the photographer. The images that remain with me, are the images that show a unique perspective of the world, a unique vision that let me see the world with the perspective of another human being. A perspective that I would have never been able to experience myself, and by doing so, it expands my life with your vision. It is this human connection that makes looking at photographs fascinating to me. By experiencing the perspective of the photographer, their vision becomes also my reality and my experience. The two dimensions of the image, multiply the dimensions of my life. And for that I am grateful to all of you, photographers, for seeing what I can't see and for sharing it with the world.

And you, "Why do you love looking at photographs?"

Miguel Garcia-Guzman

Posted in Photography