The Soul and the Art of Untampered Photography
By Jason Canavaggio
27 March 2008
We stand there with our fingers on the shutter button waiting for that one moment where we capture something unique to us as individuals. What is it that we are really photographing? Is the world in which we live? Or is it perhaps the bitter moat of our souls?
I believe there is a tendency to overlook a veiled meaning of a photograph. It's almost as though there is a hidden story behind the things we capture with the camera... we just have to look closer.
These hidden meanings compile us within the photograph as though it were a self portrait. The raw image, unchanged by editing programs, with all of its flaws shows a beauty that can only be gotten from the moment when we open up and let image in our viewfinder fade away to see inside ourselves. The result may very well be scary with all of its flaws and imperfections, but just look closer and you'll see this beauty with trembling fear as you see another world within the picture.
To quote Inge Morath when she referred to Henri Cartier-Bresson: "He took his pictures with one eye open, observing the world through the viewfinder, and the other eye closed, looking into his own soul.
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