Super X

With a camera, we may keep everything that we find. Everything that we see becomes ours. The camera is the ultimate collector. We need not take physical possession of a thing in order to possess it. To keep its image is enough. Once it is captured it becomes part of us. We assimilate all that we see. The layers build up over time. Each image, coded on some neuron or collection of neurons. Collections of collections. Ours brains are swelling. Maybe taking photographs is a natural extension of what we're already programmed to do. Scan, search, isolate, focus, analyze, reflect. We take pictures all the time. We frame and pan and crop. All the time. Everything of value is noted, and sorted and stored. We're already a camera and light table. We have the eye and the mind. A photograph however is a special moment of synchronicity. It is a frozen interaction with the world. Each and every photograph has one thing in common. They all stop time. They capture it. A photograph is thunder in a bottle. It is the sound of an oncoming storm. Or, it is the echo of the thunder. A photograph is an echo. Do you see that heavily oxidized brass shell-casing above? That thing's been sitting in this little crevice of a rock for years. But that orange lichen has been there far longer. The two of them together make for a lovely pair of old crusted things. Of course the casing is artifact, the lichen, geofact. One was made by man, the other by nature, by God. The shell-casing is from some old starter's  pistol. We can see the sharp cut of the hammer strike at the bottom of the X. Perhaps some race began here long ago. Lank bodies crouching in the mist of Ring Mountain. The race is over, and the boy who won it has grown old and passed on and somewhere in an attic is a loving cup with his name engraved upon it, also of brass, also lying on its side and cast off long after its purpose was served. And most of the time this would be a very sad thing because nobody would ever remember that race or the boy who won it. Except there was a photograph and a mind to interpret it and that mind is yours. 

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