I read about a person who made an enormous camera inside a truck. He was passionate about taking three foot images that are neither enlargements, nor digital. They capture a unique frame of life that you can hold in your hands. It uses a 19th century process called wet plate collodian. It makes it possible to create uniquely imperfect
tintypes as broad as a man's reach.
There is something satisfying about a photograph. Perhaps you have experienced the leap from being engrossed in a moment, and then clicking a photo of it. The picture makes it possible to separate yourself from the action, to walk around it, to evaluate it, to relish it.
A friend was telling me that before her mother died, she had no interest in organizing the boxes of snapshots. None. But now that her mother
is gone, she is ready. In this way she will be able to hold the memories stored within the frames, and process them a little like the way film sits in a tray of water waiting for an image to appear. She can do it slowly, on her own terms.
It is similar when you listen to someone well. When we hear with our aperture open, it allows them to release the thoughts and feelings that are undeveloped inside the camera that their our body. Outside in the
light, we can focus on them, and hold them in our hands. It enables us to walk around the perimeter of the fear, nail the judgments, uncover the misconceptions, relive the joy.
Talk to me, friend. Let me take a picture of your heart.
