photography and the [mild] sacrifice of the present for the future. maybe.

this morning in the shower, as i contemplated a recent roll of film that i took, i was reminded of a conversation that i had with the photo editor of W magazine. haha that was blatant name-dropping. anyway, she said two things that really impressed me. the first was that every picture, no matter the subject, is really a self-portrait of the photographer.

the second was that, despite the fact that it seems accessible to everyone, photography is one of the most difficult art forms, because a photographer must overcome an innate distance between her subject and herself. when you take pictures, you put the camera between yourself and whatever it is you're shooting; you don't directly experience what's going on. this reminded me of bastille day 2006, when i was told by a grumpy german to stop taking pictures and just enjoy the fireworks. one of my favorite things is looking at my pictures and remembering the moment in which they were taken, and the feeling i had. i've said before that my photographs are my memories, and i think that taking pictures is to sacrifice, in a way, a piece of the direct experience in exchange for a tangible, material memory that you can hold in your hands or hang on your wall. this is why it's so upsetting if my photos get lost or ruined- because i'm losing out. if you choose the photo over the immediate experience, and the photo vanishes, you feel completely slighted and foolish.
and then there are those rare, but incredible, cases in which the process of taking pictures is so enjoyable that it doesn't matter how they turn out in the end.