The Mind and Photography: an ongoing process.

Yes I know I am repeating myself in saying that photography is a more precise medium than video. We sincerely love video because it is live, it is colorful, it is soundly, it is cinematographic. It is fiery tail on our animated visual and earring senses. All those things that photography cannot compete in terms of modern popularity. But strangely still images seem to last longer in our memory and be more informative than a stream of pictures.

Glimpses of selected reality (as perceive by their auteur) photography offer a full view of an instant visual memory. Just think about the multiple aspects of a face expression photography is may be the best way to freeze those fugitive moment of great signification.

Behind and beyond the image are always part of the mental process that a picture can trigger in our mind. There is the pictural story on the paper (or on the screen) but there is this other story that our brain is developing about the picture itself. It is self-information added to the strict imagery of the picture. The complexity of the train of thinking triggered by a photo can be infinite as for the multiple personal interpretations we can give to it and this is the beauty of it.

We have to not forget that photography is in fact an instant glimpse of the past since it is already a selective past moment. Every time we look to a photograph we see an imperfect repetition of a subject or a context.

Unstatic Memories

Is there a learning curve about imagery? Because photography is segmenting our timeline almost on an infinitive base every single picture got the glimpse of eternal history into our mind memory. So it happens that picture became a reference you can remember under every circonstances you wish to do so. With time passing by all those pictures are stacking at a point difficult to apprehend and many picture frames of our distant past experiences seem to vanish of our voluntary recollection but time to time they appear without notice.

Mind is complex because it memorize not only pictures, odors, tastes, sensations but also impressions even interpretations. With age we sometimes experiment warp return of past moments to our astonishment. It demonstrate how the process of our mind is ongoing continually.

I have once said that persistence is an important creative factor in photography because the subject of it is in continuous dynamic of change. Light, position, context, etc are in constant evolution and the photographer as an observer should take all the opportunities to note and memorize the movement of life surrounding us. Training yourself to translate your impressions on a 2-D support is a perpetual task to accomplish with curiosity and will to repeat.

So photography is an expression of learning life through a mind process of apprehending selecting instants moments.