Living It

Time was a camera was as serious as a gun, and as well made too. It was heavy in your hands, just like a six shooter, or a sword, made of good metal, sharp glass. I often think about the similarities between the Western gunfighter, the samurai, and the photographer. Sometimes I think in a different age, at a different time, maybe I’d be one of the other two. The idea sounds a little ridiculous, I know, and I definitely blame it on the cartoons, comics and movies I watched as a kid, but think about it for just a moment- 2 of the 3 take lives, the other documents. But in a way, in a lot of ways actually, they’re very much alike. A lot of what we do takes timing, skill, training. A lot of what we do also depends on reflex, on decisive moments. The thrust of the sword, the drawing of the gun, the tripping of the shutter. And allow me to posit that what we do, what any body who is serious, deadly serious about taking good pictures does, is that a good picture can change lives as much as the dealing of death can. Or rather, they both smack of finality, of infinity- there are very few things that both god and human beings can do- one is to destroy, to kill, another, with photography, is stop time.