It's interesting to watch the way people behave after a disaster that destroys their property. Many are most concerned with their photographs for they in fact are the perfect metaphor for their life. Printed on paper in two dimensional formats, the photograph is in essence proof and validation that we existed, that our lives mattered.
I've become sad when I see photographs that have been discarded purposely or because of the events of life have hit their owners so quickly.
Photographs tell of life as strongly as they do death. In them is proof of what once was and will always be. A frozen capsule of time is what we hold in our hand. They are reverent and should be sacred to those in front of and behind the lens. When they are not treated as such, I have been known to step in and rescue them from an ignominious end. I then try as best I can to breathe some new life into them. I sometimes will scan these old photographs at a very high resolution. I then like to crop and edit the photo in a way that could perhaps make it even more appealing to the viewer. I am often attracted to ones that are not extremely clear. There's something about being a little bit out of focus and having some elements of graininess that make the photo even more life affirming. In many respects once you begin to study the particular work it can increase your fondness of it to the level of it approaching fine art.
“to take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” ”
My worldview is that each and every person on earth is sacred and has infinite importance. With this belief structure I take a very protective stance with respect to photographs for images capture time, and time is the substance of our lives.
Most of my vernacular photographic subjects have died and gone on. I think that even in some small respect a singular photograph composed properly is a tiny living legacy which testifies of the subject. It's like the lens says visually what cannot be said in the auditory, "I was a witness to your life."
“To photograph people is to violate them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.””