Portfolio > Writings

Floating Grammar of the Photograph

This is,
This happens -
The picture is a thing in-and-of-itself.

This was,
This happened -
The picture documents a past event in time-space.

This has been,
This has happened -
The picture arrests a movement in time-space,
Leaving the event unfinished,
Yet complete.

This happening -
Suddenly frozen into this was.

This was happening
When the photographer took the picture.

Before I saw the picture,
This had happened.

Perhaps this never happenned - digital future tenses emerging...

Image and document,
Fiction and non-fiction in union -
Overlapping now,
Already another then.

Subject, action, and object -
Always separate in grammar.

When were they ever separate in experience?