It is neither light nor shadow:
It is time.
(Octavio Paz ‘Letter of Faith’)
Time is the soul of photography. Time which stretches out and time which stands still. A fraction of a second can be crucial. For me photography is about hunting for an image, a moment in time. An instant later and the image may have evaporated.
The photograph on top is characterized by that component of fleetingness. The pigeon just happened to be sitting on that spot. Through the position of the sun at that moment, the pigeon cast that specific shadow. The pigeon had just alighted when the boat had that one speck, essential to the composition. The photograph is completely dictated by chance and by the eyes that saw it.
I am interested in the time in all its modes of expression: the eternal return of day and night; the cycle of the seasons; calendar time; a future without present folding back into the past in torn and superimposed billboard posters, the absolute moment that can enrich a photograph.
I am particularly fascinated by time passing because of the traces it leaves on things, because of the continuous transformation of light and shadow, because of the beauty hidden in destruction, rust, mould and damp, the years that go by…
And because of the idea that photography is no more than an illusion, an attempt to freeze time.
My source of inspiration is chance, the street.
The theme of this exhibition was inspired by chance too. I was walking along the street in Brussels when I suddenly saw some lines on a wall, written in small letters, almost calligraphy, which I never would have noticed if I didn’t have the eyes of a photographer, of someone constantly hunting for images. They were written in French: Ni ombre, ni lumière. Rien que du temps.
I had already been thinking about time as a theme for an exhibition for a few days and considered those lines to be a sign, a message, a gift from heaven. I had never seen them anywhere before. Intrigued, I looked them up on the internet and discovered that they were lines from the poem ‘Letter of Faith’ by Octavio Paz. To my astonishment I also discovered that the words, which somebody had chosen to be read by passersby – or not, of course – had been taken out of context:
Entre la noche y el día
Hay un territorio indeciso.
No es luz ni sombra :
Es tiempo.
Between night and day
There is a hazy place
Neither light nor shadow:
It is time.
Why were those lines at that place? Were they waiting for me there? Mysteries should remain unsolved. At the time of seeing them, they existed only for me. It was something I could not ignore.
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