They got into a conversation. What intrigued Tamina were his questions. Not their content, but the simple fact that he was asking them. My God, it had been so long since anyone had asked her about anything! It seemed like an eternity! Only her husband had kept asking her questions, because love is a continual interrogation. I don’t know of a better definition of love.

(In that case, my friend Hubl would have pointed out to me, no one loves us more that the police. That’s true. Just as every height has a symmetrical depth, so love’s interest has as its negative the police’s curiosity. We sometimes confuse depth with height, and I can easily imagine lonely people hoping to be taken to the police station from time to time for an interrogation that will enable them to talk about themselves.)

Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, p223 (Faber 1996)

It’s reading things like this that makes me unsure of whether I’d ever want to just do photography. In so many ways photography is so limited, and often this is the best thing about it. But sometimes, it can be very constraining. One of the most frustrating limitations is how difficult it is to do deep humour with photography. A humour based on thought rather than slapstick (which is hard enough). Another is how to tell inner stories like Kundera does above. Sometimes it makes me want to press the movie button on my camera.

Here’s an idea. Why not write little tiny short stories (one or two or three paragraphs each) for all the head shots that I’m taking. Make up their lives. Let them comment on the photo, and tell you what they were thinking when it was taken. Or what they think of the photos. Or let them tell you a totally irrelevant story. The exterior is there to see, but present an interior that is made up as well. That tells you as little truth as the photo does.

Posted 2 years ago