TITLE: Man Walking in Sunlit Alley

In downtown Pittsburgh, after the snowfall, a man walking alone in an alley

AUTHOR: Eric Falk (United States)

I came to photography late, after 36 years as a lawyer, and I am wanderer at heart. So I wander and observe, but with my camera. Sometimes as I wander, I see discrete stories in the moment. But therein lies what I see as the two wonders of photography, both lying within the limitations of photography.

A photograph can freeze a moment forever, and that is the first wonder of photography. The photograph stops time and focuses one on the exact moment that is frozen forever. But that is also the limitation which lurks within photography, because, in reality, time never stops. A story is a continuum through an arc of time. A story thus requires context, and context is forever in motion through time.

A photograph, because it freezes time, actually does not supply a story. Rather, a photograph suggests a story, a story that may lurk in the shadows of the moment, and therein lies the second, and true wonder of photography. It is those suggestions I try to capture.

Yet it remains for the viewer to provide context, to take the suggestion that arises in that frozen moment, and use emotion, imagination and interpretation to unlock that story that may exist in the photograph, for as Ansel Adams noted, “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” So we can each see a different story, or even multiple stories, suggested in the same photograph.

William Eggleston once said, “Often people ask what I'm photographing, which is a hard question to answer. And the best what I've come up with is I just say: life today.”

So the photographs here are the stories which were suggested in my feelings and my imagination in that very moment. The stories of life in that moment, of life today.