As a brief follow-on to yesterday’s post on time and photography, I thought it would be important to note that there is an essential need for time not just during the taking of any photograph, or as one is waiting to capture that essential moment, but also afterwards.
Partly this has to do with allowing pictures to rest after taking, perhaps in a similar way to what can also help with writing. A piece or image is crafted, honed, polished, and “completed” (or taken, snapped), but it is often only in the days or weeks or months after writing or pulling the trigger that the real essence of the work starts to peer through. Perhaps one notices things that hadn’t occurred to the viewer or reader before, or there are juxtapositions that weren’t in the foreground at first but become more and more prominent the more the text is re-read or the image re-examined.
In short, the review process takes time, and often there are certain images or phrases or simply words that will not let go: they are uttered, or found, and then hang around at the back of the mind for great lengths of time, surfacing at regular intervals and refusing to be put to rest, even after several attempts at capturing the nature of their persistence. These are often the most intricate ideas, perhaps also the most buried - something below the skin is just waiting to burst forth, like a ripe fruit, but it is only after bouts of handling or turning that this is possible and the riddle is solved.
One action that can help immeasurably when it comes to pictures is having them printed out and then simply pinned to a wall or placed surreptitiously on a desk. Below is one such example: this image has been through the mental washing machine several times but refuses to let itself be ensnared to date. Many different elements (including around how and when and where the picture was taken) jostle for emotional space, but have not yet allowed themselves to be aligned and arrayed for final inspection.
That time will eventually come: but for now it needs to do some additional subconscious work to enable a full and fruitful unfolding.
Lermoos 2018 : 50/365