Here, once again. At the crossroads. At the juncture of The Meaning Of Life and Where The Rubber Hits The Road;
a frequent convergence of metaphorical notions difficult enough to elucidate even under the best of circumstances, tinged at the moment by a fraught year. Make that a few fraught years. Invariably, regarding photography’s relevance, the question that lingers in agitated times is if an image can actually make a difference, can a few dozen images or hundreds of images in a festival hold sway? Yes, no, it’s admirable how the self-assured on either side of the equation are snug in their convictions.

Framed perspectives give us a sense of context, we surmise, anchoring our observations within a larger, mostly incomprehensible reality. What we choose to see within the visible spectrum defines and reflects who we are and how we think –relativism in its truest form. It’s tempting to extrapolate from a single image a grand theory of moral relativity, but that could take a dogmatic turn, and the inherent beauty of relativism is precisely its lack of dogma. Yet at some point a shutter has to be pressed, an image made. Otherwise what’s the purpose of carrying around an image-making device? The Zen of carrying a camera?

Commitments, commitments, eventually it’s all about commitments. Once at the crossroads what’s it going to be? A careful compromise? Has anything truly productive or significant ever come out of a careful compromise? This is not a rhetorical question to make a point. I really wouldn’t know the answer. Having been at the crossroads many times, I’ve never encountered anyone trying to buy my soul. To clarify, I’m not above considering the option, I just haven’t had the opportunity to consider it. Pure relativism at play.

So yes, a shutter is pressed, a commitment made, a perspective framed, a point of view defined. And it all seemed so quaint to start with. Now what? Uhhh… show it to the world perhaps? Get real. Oh wait, we live in a quantum universe, where reality is affected by the observations of a beholder. Does that mean that our image of a cat in a box, as we show it around, will effect a chain reaction of observational instances that ultimately affect the outcome of our initial observation, which does not even exist as such anymore? And by extension, does that also mean that we have somehow altered the universe by pressing a camera shutter? Has the black hole at the center of our galaxy become self aware of its photogenic side because it was repeatedly photographed? Are events on the event horizon loaded with influencer swag now that the black hole has its own Instagram account? Surely there are others thinking about this stuff as well –in a parallel universe maybe?

The viable answer though, to all these questions, would be: It depends. And then it starts all over again…

Were you expecting a tidier resolution to this? Me too.

Parse it as you will, 25 years is a long time. Cycles and trends have come, gone, and come back in that span. There is little that we have not seen. New as an adjective becomes a misnomer. Renewal as a noun is the better term, we have found, because ultimately, as our good friend Jim Broderick pointed out, it’s always about change.

Eppur si muove.

Michael Mehl
FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA SAFOTO

α-ω We were touched by meaningful transitions within our photography community this past year. 
In Memoriam : Melanie Rush-Davis, Ralph Howell, Lawrence Leissner, Will Langmore. 

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