Photography says: this place is not real, it doesn’t exist, but I was there, for a moment.
/
Photography says: this place is not real, it doesn’t exist, but I was there, for a moment. /
From Walter Benjamin
“Berlin Childhood around 1900”:"The fairy who grants a single wish exists for everyone. Yet only a few remember what they wished for, and so only a few recognise its fulfilment
as life unfolds."I am not among those few
— so I photograph.
"I only have to lift my eyes and once again I become the world.
Now, on this very spot, a feeling of happiness that I could keep forever"
Marion (Wings of Desire - W. Wenders)
With my back turned to the present, I photograph, looking toward a past I have no memory of (not yet, at least), as if it were a destination for a future that is constantly, instantly being unveiled.
Inside is not Outside;
they look at each other, desire each other, attract each other, transform each other, yet remain exactly as they are.
A sensation similar to photographing is evoked by a train journey (more than any other mode of travel): during the ride, as you look out to the sides through the window, the motion compresses the perception of the landscape, transfiguring it into a semi-open window that swiftly slips away, and a grove of birch trees waiting to greet us.
