WHAT WILL HAVE BEEN SEEN?

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC FRAME, LIKE EVERY OTHER KIND OF FENCE, includes things and excludes things at the same time, creating a double mystery in every image. Why was this information deemed important enough to be “in”? Why were other things forever left outside the perimeter, robbing us of the remaining context of the people or things within? What have we hidden, intentionally or not? What have we deliberately called attention to? What is the tension, the connection between these seen and unseen worlds?

Especially, in older pictures that depict who are no more, their position in the frame and the way in which their own gaze is directed implies things than will forever go unanswered. What, or who, are they looking at? Are they merely lost in reverie, caught accidentally in mid-step, or truly fixated on something or someone about which we can never know? It is the ability of the photograph to both convey and edit information in this perpetually unresolved fashion that contributes to its ongoing fascination. We are being told something; we will never be told everything.

Often, in so-called street work, I find myself seeking out people who, far from actively engaging with the camera, are actually oblivious to it. They are the ultimate candid subjects; those for whom the photographer is completely invisible, and more importantly, irrelevant. This has made me feel a bit of connection to those hobbyists who collect “vernacular photographs”, pictures found in odd lots in junk stores and auctions, made by people they themselves know nothing about. Not only do we find that the eternal verities of humanity are shared pretty much the same way all over the world (a birthday party is a birthday party wherever you go), but the same mystery of in-the-frame/out-of-the-frame unfolds in much the same way for every shooter. Who are these people?, we ask at first, only to realize that, of course, they are all us.