Philippe Triconnet — Journal

Jean d’Ormesson once wrote from a place very close to departure. In " Un jour je m’en irai sans en avoir tout dit ", he returns often to time, light, and the feeling that the world is larger than anything we can say about it. He was fascinated by the fact that light carries the past. The light of a star reaches us long after it has left. To look at it is already to look backwards. Photography begins there. Not with the illusion that we can stop time, but with the knowledge that light is never quite immediate. It has touched a face, a wall, a stone, a street. Then it reaches the camera. For a fraction of a second, we call it the present. But it is already leaving. A photograph keeps something of that delay. It brings back an instant, but only as a trace. And later, when someone looks at the image, another distance has opened. What was present for the camera has become past for the viewer. The light has become memory. Perhaps photography does not stop time. It only shows that i...