Language
Take. Capture. Shoot.
It’s been said that a word is like the arrow once released, it cannot be called back.
Take
Capture
Shoot
Los Angeles, CA, 1978
The words, the language, we employ as photographers contextualizes our experience in very subtle ways. Taking, capturing, and shooting—these are our verbs, and, as such, inform us, even shape us. They are all words of acquisition. They are all words of violence, and, outwardly directed, these words to some extent externalize the act of making an image.
When I am out in the world with my camera I am looking, searching, sensitive to all that is going on around me. I’m hunting, following movement, and seeking the apex, the reveal, the hidden story. When I release the shutter I feel a sensation of near to acquisition. I’ve got it. I experience a sense of possession and a release within. The shutter is held with tension. The tension in the camera that is released when I press the shutter closely mirrors the release of tension in me when I “take the picture”.
Maybe this momentary release, along with the satisfaction associated with acquisition, has something to do with why people love photography. I know this is true for me, yet I’m also sensitive to the affect it has on others. This leads me to question what’s going on in me, in them, and in the process of photography when it is so externally directed.
Language can empower and it can disempower. What changes when I replace the possessive language used to denote photography with words that center the act of creation in me? What happens when it is no longer me taking, capturing, and shooting, but rather me creating? What changes when I become the creator rather than the taker?
Venice Beach, CA, 1978
We are, in fact, creators. If you are not there to make the photograph the moment flows on, unencumbered by our presence, unrecorded, and uninterpreted. Our presence is a creative act in itself. We create through our choices, our interests, our attractions and our compulsions. This understanding empowers us. The making of photographic images need not be directed externally, but rather internally, where we can claim it’s power, where we can create.
