Saturday, June 9, 2012

You are here

   People who are more serious and thoughtful than I am debate whether a photograph can truly be true.  Some say a photo is true if it just depicts what was there when it was made, if it is just a "light drawing" -- the literal translation of the Japanese word for photograph) of what exist?.  Others say that a photograph by its very nature does not depict any singular truth, but instead is unavoidably a version, a story about the truth, which is dependent on the angle, the aperture, the shutter speed, and all the other choices, conscious or not, that the photographer (or editor) has made.  

   I don't know whether a photograph can be the truth.  But I do know that a photograph can say something that is true.    This one, which I took in a playful spirit, now seems to me to say the most important true thing of all.   

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