106 Quotes About Photographs

In my photographic work I was always especially entranced, said Austerlitz, by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again if you try to cling to them, just like a photographic print left in the developing bath too long.

…this is the problem with photographs. After a while, you can’t remember if you’re recalling the actual memory or the memory of the photograph. Or perhaps the photograph is the only reason you remember that moment. (p.85)

Now, obviously, all old people seem cool whenever we see black-and-white images of their younger selves. It's human nature to inject every old picture with positive abstractions. We can't help ourselves. We all do it. We want those things to be true, because we all hope future generations will have the same thoughts when they come across forgotten photographs of us.

Out here are books and magazines- asleep, carrying the entire world in them, and standing there are walls and windows, staring at me, and leaves of letters here-- about to go melting quite like the heart itself, and photographs-- lost in themselves as if- they're thinking of someone.

I handed the photo back to her. The caretaker gazed at it as if it were a lucky charm, a return ticket to her youth.

Old photographsWe take pictures with peopleso they could remember usand leave memories behindso they don’t forget us.And the differencebetween the two are the same.We leave these momentsin the air,hoping that somewheresomeone will find themand make sense of everythingwe chose to ignore.

We take pictures with peopleso they could remember usand leave memories behindso they don’t forget us.And the differencebetween the two are the same.We leave these momentsin the air,hoping that somewheresomeone will find themand make sense of everythingwe chose to ignore.

Thanks to photography, some memories overstay their welcome.

Photographs, it seems to me, are both moments in time and bits of memory.