Suspended in time and space: Slices of life

Abstract

Still photography, by definition, stills the piece of reality it captures in a split second. Plucks away a slice and freezes it. But it is a slice from a universe in which nothing is naturally still, frozen, stationary or quiescent; nor random and unconnected. The “still” photograph is thus more than a slice, more than a split second. Contained in it are elements of the universe of which it is a part. Suspended in it is the flow of history. The words I write, which often read like “poems,” are meant to establish the link between the particularized elements and the ever-dynamic larger universe. The sociologist in me has helped me to see the connection. The view-finder in my camera, I may say, is a sociologized one.