Photographer B.A. Van Sise looks back on 2022 through the lens of his one-film-photo-a-day project.
Blissfully unblessed by beauty, it’s easy to throw out the old saw that I hate being photographed. It’s an easy hate to hold onto.
Both workshop groups – at very different stages in their lives – jumped immediately to the idea that their presence in the image was that of the photographer. Both groups understood, intrinsically, that the photograph made a long journey to arrival in the “arbitrary” selection of angle, of moment, of editing, of narrative, of presentation, of the passing of time. Both groups understood, deeply, that the honest photographer, even in their best, like the honest poet, even in their best, lies.
Now, almost all of my photographs are of strangers who have no idea what life the perception of their memory grows into; I, like you, live in a changing world in which every stranger I meet is, perhaps, a bit stranger than the one before and who, unknowingly, defines and redefines my own body of work. I make my perceptions of memory, like many photographers, in the hopes of making something poetic, to show it to new eyes. But also –like everybody else, I hope– to put something of myself in it.
For some, it’s in the journey. for others, their love. their hobby. It might be the hand to hold. the book you read, the movie you see. We may write – because the photograph is, in the very Greek of it, the writing of light – of the long draw of a cigarette, the heavy clink of ice in the glass, the thrill of climax. What we write about can be all the vicious vices, or the fast cut of dawn as it cracks across the field and lets you know you’ve survived another night.