Dear Friend of my Heart,

Do you still have a sense of wonder for photographs?

The capturing of a moment in an image is, in my understanding, the tip of the iceberg. As people engaged in the process of photographing instances of worlding, we are always at the risk of forgetting to see. It’s something like the poet forgetting her own blossoming emotions to fulfill pedagogical prescriptions of the academy and the ubiquitous beats of the trend. For me the moment of capturing happens almost as if it is outside of time but very deeply involved with the movements happening within time. The photograph is a very strange thing. Do you remember that? We are so inescapably surrounded by the photograph and almost always in possession of the equipment to photograph that it has lost its strangeness, and well… the aura. This is not an apology or a looking back at the golden age of photography when it was still young. I do not wish to say to you anything as inexcusably emotional as those were the days… but I feel like for anything to start making sense again it has to become unknown. A photograph does not have to be about visibility… it could be about that which isn’t visible… or that which hides in the shadows… I do have the disturbing and blinding instance of a flash in my mind when I feel for the shadows…

It helps me understand photography to just see the world… to look at that one leaf lost in the thick foliage… without the tension of capturing everything that I see…

this letter I will leave without an image…

what does a photograph mean to you? I know it is even too general a question… like what does a song mean to you… every song means something different to you, I presume… but what does it mean to take a picture, or to look at one…

Eager to hear from you.

Yours in curiosity,
Prashant Nawani