Azalea and Birch Trees(Y-55)


 


It occurs to me that people pass by this spot every day; some have spent the labor of their lives working in it. The two ideographs used to denote 'photograph' in Japanese flash through my mind: shashin; to capture truth, to reproduce reality.

This photograph will reproduce reality, and that, pure and simple, is what is so difficult, and perhaps contradictory. For if I do my work well, it will not merely copy reality, it will create one; invent a past, while capturing this fragment of the present. It is a mirror with a memory, of places that might become overlooked, or remembered differently.