RE: [Leica] Natchwey interview

["Dan Honemann" <ddh@home.com>]

Donal,

> But occasionally doing personal work for stock or a project, I get
> beyond the making and into the witnessing and have on a few rare
> instances feel I have channeled a moment of reality onto film that
> bypasses me, or better, throughpasses me transparently--and that is the
> most rewarding of all, personally, and perhaps gives others a glimpse of
> a reality they hadn't known before.

Well stated.  I am drawn to photography (and to the Leica M as a tool) for
just this reason.  For me, it is a medium of attention, and attention is
transparent and entirely impersonal.  In fact, it has no boundaries, no
interest, no judgment and no pre-conceptions.  It is immediate and stark,
open to all possibilities, and so has room for everything.  Photography,
like life (as it is lived in the moment), is just another word for
discovery.

> The Nachwey book--like the Salgado books--are not about photography, but
> about history and politics at one level, and on another, the intimate
> personal experience of the moment.

Yes, and isn't it true that the most intimate personal moments are
(paradoxically) universal and impersonal?  I find that the more "I" get out
of the way, the more I _see_, the more reality shines through as it is.
This is the decisive moment--at one level political and historical, at a
deeper level, unbounded and timeless.

Dan