Once, at a photographic event, some friends asked a question about one of my images. I said that this was a story better left untold. They replied that this would be a good title for a series. Time has proved them right.
I have always been drawn to those questions, the untold stories that certain individual photographs can evoke. I like photographs that go further than simply what they are, or seem to be. I see this often in the work of Koudelka, Iturbide, Giacomelli and others. Images that are “open” and make the viewer think, that create a curiosity by their very existence. Images, which in many ways, can never be contained in a frame.
We all have our secrets, some of which we take to our grave, and perhaps that is for the best. In the end a secret is simply an untold story and a photograph is just another way to tell it.
I am looking for the mysteries these stories contain, but not the answers. The actual facts, the truth, reality, they all bore me. I would rather imagine than know and I prefer dreams to knowledge. I like those things that slip away or break and shatter when you try to reach out and touch them, like the reflection of the moon on a lake.
A wise friend once asked if I was sure these were other peoples stories or, since I was the photographer, were they perhaps my own? It was a fair question and I am not sure I know the answer. I am not sure I want to.
STORIES BETTER LEFT UNTOLD
