Ziploc

A fast shutter speed freezes motion. It is one of the first things a photographer learns, hardly a technique worth making a mystery of. The interesting part of this photograph, for me, has little to do with the shutter itself.

Victor Ikeda seems to have been frozen in an entirely different way. The compressed perspective collapses the space between foreground and background, playing tricks on our sense of depth. His airborne body appears almost sculptural, with a volume that the flat surface of the photograph cannot possibly contain. He looks like something vacuum-sealed in a Ziploc bag, tucked away in the freezer.

This is one of the things I love about photography: a technical choice can lead somewhere its maker never anticipated. Once an image passes through the photographer’s imagination, a straightforward procedure can become a source of unexpected associations. I still can’t decide whether I’m an artist who takes photographs or a photographer who makes art. The distinction matters less to me than the fact that I love doing both.

The trouble is that this curiosity comes with an absurd price: one lifetime will never be enough to learn everything I want to know about these two ways of engaging with the world. So I keep working on the technical side, hoping it will eventually become second nature, as instinctive as breathing. I want my attention available for the moment when a photograph begins to mean something beyond what it shows.

That is what I hope to hold on to here. Not simply Victor caught in midair, but the strange afterlife of a technical decision: the unexpected thought it sets in motion long after the shutter has closed.

If I get another life, I’d choose this one all over again. I’d just ask for more time to travel…