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Tender

 

This is a snapshot. I didn't set up the camera or the lighting or the subjects. Technically this is not a great photo, I know that, but of the 80,000 or so images on my computer this is probably the one I love the most. 

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They sit across the table from me in the museum cafe. I can't now remember the details of their conversation but I know it was kind of free flowing. I took about a dozen shots, each one different because each one did what photographs always do: reduce some live and dynamic process to a single still, captured moment. And here was a conversation which was a process. And that conversation was part of a much greater process: the relationship which has grown between mother and daughter for 5 years now. This great flow can't be captured in one still frame; but in the very act of capturing and holding, the photograph can allow us to see what is there. Or at least, part of what is there. 

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What amazes me when I look at the photographs afterwards is how different each shot is from the others. Each one has something so say. Each is a kind of footnote to the story of this relationship. 

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Of course I worked on this picture. I took away the colour and the extraneous details. I trimmed it so that there was a flow of light, strengthening through the frame and reaching a peak in my grand daughter's face. I placed her eye in the centre of the frame to give a sense of stillness and rest. But all  this manipulation of the original RAW file wasn't an attempt to construct something. It was an attempt to tell the truth, or at least, to focus attention on one part of the truth, perhaps the most important truth of this relationship. My grand daughter is loved. She knows she is loved. She loves in return. 


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