Ten Steps Back

“The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water;
but to walk on the earth.”
(Chinese Proverb)

 

“Family”. ROME – 24 July 2020

Photography can have many high purposes.

It's a very powerful weapon.

Eugene Smith forced the Chisso Corporation to close after his  photographs published on LIFE magazine revealed to the world how their mercury discharges were poisoning and decimating the village of Minamata, in the 1970s.

Alberto Korda will give the world, with just two shots, the face of Che Guevera as a symbol of all revolutions; Don McCullin risked madness to document the horrors of wars.

 

Many unnecessary photographs are also taken, for heaven's sake, and these are the vast majority.

 

Then there are photos that have their own particular place.

I would almost say a destiny, if it were not for the fact that the use of this sublime word seems risky to me referred to a simple play of light and lenses.

It happens that a friend of mine asks me to take some photos of her family for a magazine, as a corollary of their interview.

We have known each other for many years, we have collaborated in the realization of some books here in Rome. We share a passion for Bangladesh and in Dhaka I was a guest with relatives of her husband.

Now she is also pregnant with the second child.

So we went to a park in Rome, at sunset, where, moreover, every year the first day of Bangladesh's New Year is celebrated.

Not even an hour to walk, chat and take pictures with the profile of the ancient Roman aqueduct in the distance.

 

Then at home, the most beautiful moment for me, in front of the computer screen to view the photos and choose the most interesting ones.

And among the most usual images, the classic family portraits in pose, this photograph emerges, kissed by a golden light that makes everything magical.

The curious thing is that it was meant to be a test of light, to then photograph them walking in front of me.

Instead, in the end, it is the one most liked by me and them.

 

I have already written about the photographs from behind, on their metaphorical quality.

But it's not just this.

Beyond the practical purposes of the photo, it is a photo that belongs exclusively to them in its meaning; I am just an intermediary.

It's the memory of a month before having another child, making me participate remotely in their emotions. It's to immortalize love.

 

Every time such photographs happen, I get excited. Like photographs of weddings, birthdays or graduation deliveries. Or like when I go to the home of a friend of mine who now has the ritual of the family photo session, every year: from the first moment she was still pregnant with her first child, then the second child, and since then she has called me regularly to remember print of children growing up.

The same was true for my brother's wedding, although I wasn't their official photographer, they wanted my camera to capture their happiness.

 

“My brother's wedding”. Argentario. TUSCANY – 29 June 2019

 

We photographers, after all, don't have a well-defined position towards what happens beyond the lens. We are there and we are not. We are within the existence of people portrayed but also distant and “other thing”.

We fluctuate between being witnesses and creators of life moments but also never part of them.

The emotions and love of my friend's family, or of the many photographs over the years, will never belong to me: I am always ten steps back from them. But that love becomes visible, and exists, thanks to my camera.

Then everyone returns to their home, absorbed by everyday life, and I vanish.

We photographers cease to exist.

But our images remain, and for many people they acquire an unforgettable value.

They are framed, hung on the walls of the house, looked every day, and perhaps, sometimes, with tears in their eyes for the emotions evoked.

They are like the novels that each of us reads to live lives that we will never be able to experience in practice. That a life is never enough.

 

So are the photographs, infinite ways of declining our lives, even if only for an hour or a second.

With deep gratitude, and a little melancholy.

 

Ten steps back.

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Patrick Mahé, Didier Rapaud: “Les héros du photojpurnalisme” (Editions du Chene-Hachette Livre, 2014)

Italian version