Words

October 24, 2007 by Avy.

“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder—a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.”
- Susan Sontag

I’m pretty much ready to violate someone. Soon. Any volunteers?

Actually, I have volunteers. I just have to call them. And I don’t want to violate them. For some types of photography, Susan is completely correct. But I don’t want the truth in all my photos. I want to create something. There’s some sort of beauty in all things, even violated things, but don’t want to murder. I’d rather give birth. It’s not easy to shoot what’s already there and make it interesting. I think it is even more difficult to get the image in your mind to translate photographically. Lighting, make up, hair tricks, the right models with the right postures and poses. It all comes together with a lot of thought and work. I get excited when I think about it and frightened at the same time.

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