A small observation from my archive
I didn’t set out to make these photographs.
They were made at different times, in different places and for different reasons. Some came from photographing people, some from photographing places of faith, some simply from walking around with a camera.
When I made them, I didn’t see them as belonging to one another.
It was only later, while going back through my photographs, that I noticed something.
There was often just one person in the frame.
And somehow, that one person was enough.
Enough to give scale to a space.
Enough to create tension.
Enough to introduce silence.
Enough to make an otherwise ordinary place feel inhabited.
The person gives the space scale, but the space gives the person meaning.
I find myself increasingly interested in that relationship.
And perhaps that is why these photographs found each other in my archive.
I wasn’t looking for this idea when I made them.
The photographs found the idea before I did.
Maybe that’s one of the pleasures of photographing over time. You make the pictures first. Much later, if you are willing to look back carefully, they sometimes tell you what you have been looking at all along.
One person. One space. One moment.
Sometimes, one is enough.
The Evidence of Someone
Sometimes you don’t need to see a face.
A pair of hands can tell you that someone is there.
.
Alone Among the Pews
Rows of empty pews.
A nun sitting quietly among them. Her feet says it all.
The space is large, but the person is what holds my attention.
.
Before the Altar
One person praying before something much larger than himself.
The architecture gives him scale.
He gives the architecture meaning.
.
In Silence
Nothing appears to be happening here. Deep silence.
And perhaps that is the point.
One person. One quiet moment.
.
Moving Through
Without the person, this might simply be a photograph of an escalator.
With him, it becomes a photograph about movement.
.
Waiting
A man rests his head on a table.
I don’t know if he is sleeping, waiting or simply taking a moment.
I don’t need to know.
.
Above the Water
A face. An arm. Water everywhere else.
The less of the person I can see, the more I notice his presence.
.
Against the Shutter
One man against a shutter that stretches across the frame.
The background is almost everything.
Yet somehow, he is enough.
One last thought
Perhaps I’ve been looking for too much in photographs.
More people. More action. More information.
Looking at these together, I think I’ve started to appreciate something simpler.
One person can be enough.
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