“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” - Susan Sontag
I created this image in response to the notion of the above quote, that being of the acknowledgement and, ultimately, the celebration of a moment in it’s own mortality. Initially I was deliberately placing myself to see what elements would combine in my head to form a sense of meaning but had found no luck. I continued walking and turned a corner to find this uninhabited void of shadow and man-made light staring back at me. Taking the photograph was simply an automatic reaction in finding the moment again.
I found that by reading this photograph in the context of the quote I began to pay more attention to the fleeting aspect of the captured moment instead of reflecting on my subjective experience in this environment; the dawn was fast approaching, so my taking the photograph has effectively halted “time’s relentless melt”.
