Monographs, Collections, Sharing
Moments snap together like magnets, forging a chain of shackles. Why? I can trace them. I can even, with time, pull them apart again. But why at the start they were ever magnetized at all—just those particular moments of experience and no others—I don't know. And nor does anyone else."
— Equus, Peter Shaffer
Time and photography are intrinsically linked. At its core, the act of "capturing a moment" is a manifestation of how we experience time, both its observance and manipulation: see, freeze, portray. In so many cases, those moments snap together, so to speak, to share a more expansive story, convey a more considerable concept, or even inspire a more profound feeling.
Sometimes it's purely documentary; the images tell a story from start to finish with a narrative throughline. Occasionally these groupings are generally or specifically topical; the curation of images commiserates and contrasts a visual concept. Rarer still, collections imply profound and fundamental elements of the creator in all its senses.
Over the last few weeks, I guess that on this little blog (that six people see), I've been assembling small monographs with throughlines of light, texture, place, and time. It's a word I first heard used within photography by David duChemin, a world-renowned humanitarian photographer, author, and teacher—also one of my most pivotal creative influences over the last decade-plus. Indeed, he didn't create the concept, but he did introduce the moniker to my creative process, and his monographs have inspired my creative eye in myriad ways.
The act of assembling little collections of photos is, itself, a creative exercise in curation—one that can be playful or serious, direct or vague, educational or entertaining.
One of the directions that I'd like to embrace the technique of monographs is to battle back my tendency to consider old, unshared collections of photos as "lost to time." Instead, especially in the case of travel, there's an energy of immediacy, an insistence tied to publically sharing work about a place "in the moment."
"Are you there now?"
"Is this a throwback?"
"Am I too late to share these?"
Quieting those imagined voices is the first step to embracing more creative sharing of the work I've done over the last decade, in particular for which I've not had the time to process and share in "real-time."
So, in the spirit of the long-standing Throwback Thursday posts, I'd like to begin creative monographs that document previous travel, "artsy" captures from then and now, and whatever else tickles my visual fancy. Today, I’ll revisit some images I made while visiting Prague in the summer of 2021, during that ever-so-brief window of possibility during a pandemic wherein we could travel abroad.
All manner of prints for any of these images are available on my SmugMug site HERE.
Often, monographs are produced as printed material, and in modern times, photographers like David create versions as PDFs for people to enjoy—a digital coffee table book of sorts.
Would that be of interest to anyone out there reading this? If I were to create PDF monographs to share, would you, faithful reader, be interested in having them? Maybe I could send them out to a mailing list or make them available for download directly on the site. Drop me a comment below if you would and how!
