2010, from Autobiography, in my iPad application Horvatland
But which are the fragments of reality – among the millions that offer themselves to my eyes – in which ‘I recognise something that I already know’? The best answer I can give is: ‘Those in which I sense a meaning’. Though I am aware that the meaning is not so much in the reality as in the mind, that it is as elusive and fluctuating as mind itself, that it has to be seized when it comes into my line of sight – just as I would seize a dancer’s pirouette, or a wild animal’s leap, or a person’s moment of truth. However, this answers the ‘what?’, but not the ‘how?’ How can a photograph capture and convey a meaning? Here, I can only think of the answer that was given to me by Cartier-Bresson, at the very start of my life as a photographer: the ‘how’ is a matter of form. Form is precisely what I am seeking, when I perceive something that ‘makes my receptors vibrate’. If I find it, my photo will work. Which means that, in turn, it may trigger the receptors of others. As if we were all – more or less – the beneficiaries of a common heritage, and as if form was a kind of signature, certifying that a photograph (or any other product of human invention) is a legitimate part of it. This makes me think of another quote from Goethe: ‘Just plunge your hand into the fullness of human life: whatever you seize will be of interest’(‘Greif nur hinein ins vollen Menschenleben, und wo Du’s packsts, da ist’s interessant’).
2008 05 03, Cotignac, France, "La Véronique", death of a rose
