Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Up In "Smoke"

From time to time you'll get occasional reflection mention of how we all single handedly speed view the plethora of photographs now available at our instant disposal. And despite being schooled of this particularly vile habit, I fall victim to it time and time again like any other shallow 21st century mortal. So I find myself constantly reminding myself, constantly retraining and committing myself to slowing down, seeing what I'm actually attempting to look at, and trying to make sense of what I'm experiencing- before feeding the compulsion to rush to the next image for no, good, rational reason.

This scene from the memorable 1995 film Smoke approaches that very subject back in the analog days when one could still inhale and imbibe at one's own leisure in a public interior. And it concerns nothing less than photography's major raison d'etre- the very capture of time itself, and both the subtle and sublime appreciation of said power...





 How Auggie got that camera...



Why not... the true meaning of Christmas (for good measure)!



4 comments:

Unknown said...

Beautiful thanks.

Hernan Zenteno said...

"The eye should learn to listen before it looks", Robert Frank. You make me remember this beautiful scenes of that movie and like a perfume I was there, years ago, more young and in my beginnings doing photography. Just last time I was thinking about that, why we do photos and the stories around that. The three scenes and Tom Waits song made me roll some tears. Many thanks for the emotion shared

Unknown said...

Ok, so I've bought the movie, now waiting for my partner to be available to share it with. Thanks.

Stan B. said...

Enjoy!

Now you may want to get the "sequel:"

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxiiv5_blue-in-the-face-first-scene-1995-by-wayne-wang-and-paul-auster_shortfilms