Moving down the aisles that are carved between each row of seats, the line slowly edges on. A choir of no more than three people -- woman and two men -- expel their voices gently and slowly, serenading the churchgoers as they inch forward toward the pulpit where they receive their bread and wine.
A man I know as Jay reaches into his car to try to force his engine to kick over, leaning deeply into the door as if the weight of the world is upon him in this moment. Each detail, as frivolous as the last, lends itself to the mystery of the frame.
A few weeks ago, I walked outside of my house and nearly stumbled over a package. It was flat, rectangular, and large. Excitedly I read my name on the postage. “This is it,” I told myself. Quickly, I ran inside and removed the scissors from a drawer in my kitchen (the one that for some reason refuses to stay on the rails, no matter how many times I fix it) and sliced the package open.
"Yet to an obsessive his obsession always seems to be of the nature of things and so is not recognized by what it is." Those words, written by art critic John Berger in his book Ways of Seeing, annotate one part of his understanding of the history of oil paintings: it’s obsessive tendencies toward showmanship of what one has, and the relationship between property and art.
A dark reality exists within photography that few photographers are willing to discuss and many refuse to even recognize. In the name of purity, we tend to see photography as a medium that couldn’t -- shouldn’t be able to -- do harm.