"The instinct to record."
There could be quite a bit read into that little phrase. Recording whatever we choose is the first thing we do in photography, our first instinct. That is the snapshot phase, where we record images of our friends, our car, our pets, our house... and end up with a catalog dry to everyone but us and those with a personal interest in our lives. That is the initial instinct, to record as a simple, utilitarian thing. The equivalent of such a photograph of a female in language is to point at her and say, "That's her."
But we hopefully go on from there, in language to develop complex sentences, then paragraphs, essays, books... We start using similes and metaphors, and maybe, if it's in us, our language becomes lyrical, poetic. Instead of "that's her," it becomes, " But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun! Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou her maid are more fair than she..."
Instead of making snapshots of Charis, EW took her to the sand dunes.
The instinct is still there. There is an inherent instinct we react to that sparks the image strongly in our minds, and so we create the image on film, then paper. It is still a record, but also an interpretation, an expression, a metaphor, a poem, perhaps, if we're lucky, an epiphany.
My epiphanies tend to have dust spots...
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