- A photograph means that an image has been stolen from time. The image has been captured and once you look at the image you too will become captured. So you will stand with the image in mutual capturedness being reminded that the photograph, the image, the reminder of a place you can never return, a place that you can never go, a time you can never touch, can only bring longing, nostalgia, a happy kind of sadness.
- The photograph steals a moment from the past and present at the same time. Upon looking at it you long to continue to do just this, look at it; even if it is only for a second a moment from time has been taken.
- If the image is particularly good you will feel the need to go back to this image, see it again, experience it again. But no matter how much you love the image or feel for it you may never get that same feeling you had the very first time you saw the image, the moment, the reminder.
- A photograph always has to be tangible, an image does not. You can touch the photograph but you cannot touch the moment. You can love it but you cannot go back, you cannot feel again, you cannot understand deeper than what you see.
- A photograph can be a very interesting thing. You can take the image from the look on your sister’s face when she caught you in the kitchen seconds before thumb met knife blade and store it in the scar on your hand. If you photograph this scar on your hand you have now managed to steal multiple images from time and place them in one photograph. Upon looking at the photograph you create another moment in time, another possible photograph.
- When you look at a photograph you may think that you gain the ability to steal the image of the moment that you are in. You may think that you escaped the longing, the nostalgia, the happy kind of sadness. Do not be deceived. Unless a photograph is taken you will feel these things. If a photograph is taken, you will still feel these things. There is no escape, a photograph just makes these feelings better or worse. There is no saying.
- If you take a photograph of the scar, then a photograph of you looking at the photograph of the scar, and so on. You can capture a never-ending sequence of moments, but these moments will be lost in you. Photographs will be lost in the world. In the end everything will be gone. There is no escape from this. Photographs were created to bring longing and nostalgia and a happy kind of sadness.
Arit Emmanuela Etukudo 