Reed Galin - photographer's statement

                                Photographer's Statement

When I was thirteen my mother dragged me into an art gallery to say hello to a friend. As they talked I gazed indifferently at the walls untill my eyes locked on the only photograph, half hidden in a corner. In it, an opalescent moon levitated in the gloaming above a broad landscape, illuminating what I first thought were small structures...  a closer look revealed these were grave markers in an old cemetary. 

The photograph spoke. 

There are places and moments in the world so beautiful, poingant and fleeting - it seemed to say - that you should fix and keep them always. They may be ordinary places, or common experiences.  But, in a certain mood, a decisive moment, a passing light never repeated they become an experience not just seen, but felt. 

A card loosely taped on the wall  below the photograph identified it, “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico: Ansel Adams."  It would be some years hence before Adams  - or any photographers - would be commonly recognized as more than craftsmen by the art world and general culture.)

I was astonished to be so touched by an interpretive vision of reality captured fleeting seconds before it escaped into the ether, never again to be seen just so.

That moment and that irrevocable image changed my life. 

From then on I would vigilantly maintain a waking state. I would try to see the world and not just move through it, practicing the visual equivalent of stopping to smell the flowers. I would focus. Figuratively. Literally (with a camera). 

Few photographs are obviously profound or speak to someone other than the maker, especially now that everyone has a camera in their pocket every waking hour and individual images pile up like sand granuals on a beach every day. But, even the perfunctory photos I make - whether as Art or Commerce - are also experiences. How the air feels; the persperation running down my face or my frozen toes; a character who engags or runs me off; the elements, luminance and shadow of a natural or unnatural world; the reason I am there and how that came to be whether I'm alone or collaberating with others; how the scene or subject changed by the second or the season or the purpose and... the light... yes, always - The Light; my own joy or disgust, excitement, fear, satisfaction or frustration over missed opportunity or a brilliant get.   

I can't imagine how much life I would have missed (or simply forgotten) if not for an endless fascination with fixing moments, experiences, objects and thoughts that fellow travelors do not even know just passed them by.

"Hey, sorry, but we gotta' go back so I can get a shot of that haystack before the sun dissapears." 

"What haystack?" 

Photography is not a just an avocation or a business. It is not a craft, or a dalience. It is a livestyle. Art and commerce and documentation and time-travel all wrapped up together.

It is the reason I always take the long way home.