I shot my first photograph about 18 years ago, of the Bixby Bridge in Big Sur, on my father's camera. I consider that moment to be a threshold in my fate. Sometimes we choose to walk through the threshold an sometimes we don't. Sometimes there isn't an apparent choice. Photographs are like evidence of doors to fate, though there is no real evidence to be found. Had my father not handed over his camera to his nine-year-old, trusting me to not only delicately handle this very complicated and fragile adult object, but to relate our experience, I am not sure this medium would have resonated with me in the same way.
Photography manifests our compulsion to hold on to experience. It is not the only medium that does this, but its continual advancement of speed, user-friendliness, availability, and sharing capability is demonstrative of our need to hang on. It is in this sense, honestly depicting what we choose to remember. It is also a lie. Our attempts to capture any of our experience are futile. At the very least we save these scraps to trigger the memories we want to associate with. The moment of examining a photograph is both a sweet sentimental conjuring as well as a sharp disappointment for what our experience was not.
We share these shreds as small bridges in and out of ourselves and each other. My fate with the photographic process has led to the generation of images, which are like stutters in the stream of my experience. This set of images is an amalgam of paused thoughts and feelings which I feel may be enjoyable, however I leave "enjoyment" undefined.
I share with you this series of approximations.
-Diana Graue
