All in a single afternoon

One of the great pluses of playing around with a digital camera is the endless opportunity to practice. Because one gains immediate viewing of the images one captures, attempting more shots, frames, lights, shapes, and lines seems the natural choice. Conversely, a heightened level of caution accompanies analog photography, not just because of all the expenses involved (developing, film rolls, etc.), but there is this keen sense that each photo taken is less an intangible image than an undeniably material object. I could not explain with rigor why handling objects seems to inspire more pause and care than handling images, but it is experienced that way.

Objects occupy a portion of space and time in the world in ways that the immaterial image does not. The image may have a body, but the extent of that body begins and finishes within our visual range and always remains ever so susceptible to the coaxing of the imagination. The object, as is the film, governs an amount of space and time that our vision or imagination cannot maneuver with unchallenged sovereignty. Physical contours, weight, and texture demand to be negotiated with in ways that the image does not or cannot. Inch by inch, the object resists the expansion of the movement and actions unleashed by our body. The object's resistance marks the limits of our body's desire to do, make, and take. The analog photo incarnates that resistance whereas the image can only symbolize it. The image's aim/attempt to index is the object's reason for being.