How photography demands your presence

Things that would not have merited a second glance are now unquestioningly, almost automatically, recorded. The doors of our fridges, glimpses of cleavage, images of our birthday cakes, the setting sun: cheap photography makes visible the ways in which we are similar, and have for a long time been similar. Now we have proof, again, and again, and a

“The photograph isn’t what was photographed, it’s something else,” Garry Winogrand once said. “It’s about transformation.” The photographic image is a fiction created by a combination of lenses, cameras, film, pixels, color (or its absence), time of day, season.

The camera is an instrument of transformation. It can make what it sees more beautiful, more gruesome, milder, darker, all the while insisting on the plain reality of its depiction.

As I progressed further with my project, it became obvious that it was really unimportant where I chose to photograph.

The particular place simply provided an excuse to produce work … . you can only see what you are ready to see—what mirrors your mind at that particular time.

—George Tice