The Rush of Memory
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Photographer Mark Peterson took an unusual photograph of
Defense Secretary James Mattis for the cover of the NY Times Magazine. I was
particularly attracted to quote of his when he was interviewed by Katie Van
Syckle in her How a Photographer Got a Rare Shot of James Mattis.
The power of photography is it freezes the moment. What
you’re hoping with a still image is to create something that is frozen, so you
look at it, but you can see the past and the future in that moment.
Mark Peterson
I am wondering how the Pre-Socratic Heraclitus would have
opined on that. Heraclitus famously wrote:
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not
the same river and he's not the same man. There is nothing permanent except
change. You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are
ever flowing on to you.
As I look at this Polaroid reversed peel of my friend K
sitting at my computer in the old Kerrisdale home I can almost imagine the
precise moment when I pressed the shutter of my Mamiya. But then it took a
while (a minute) before I could peel it apart. I have the nice print but it
took until now (years later) for me to scan the negative and reverse it in
Photoshop. It would seem that the moment of exposure (possibly 1/15 second) has
been like the waters of Heraclitus. They flow and we see different things.
Looking at the original print is it I ask myself different from looking through
the viewfinder?
But the most difficult concept to grasp is the idea that
when I was taking that picture I would find myself years later on the same desk
as K but in a different oficina? When I look at this picture can I understand
the rush of memory?
