“Experience has taught us again and again that ... automatism is far more powerful than the will of any individual; and should someone possess a more independent will, he or she must conceal it behind a ritually anonymous mask in order to have an opportunity to enter the power hierarchy at all. And when the individual finally gains a place there and tries to make his or her will felt within it, that automatism, with its enormous inertia, will triumph sooner or later, and either the individual will be ejected by the power structure like a foreign organism, or he or she will be compelled to resign his or her individuality gradually, once again blending with the automatism and becoming its servant, almost indistinguishable from those who preceded him or her and those who will follow.”
Toronto Vistas /
Leica R8, 28 mm Elmarit-R, Ilford HP5+, Kodak D76 1+1.
Blind to what we might otherwise have been /
“Whatever fate sends us quickly becomes us and we grow blind to what we might otherwise have been. And how else should it be? If we could see ourselves as capable of being different, then how resentful, or else in the opposite case how fearful that would leave us!”
Self-portrait in the bathroom mirror /
Leica R3, 50 mm Summicron, Ilford HP5+, Kodak D76 1+1.
The world of his longing made real /
“Your friend is in the grip of an irrational passion. Nothing you say to him will matter. He has in his head a certain story. Of how things will be. In this story he will be happy. What’s wrong with this story?
You tell me.
What is wrong with this story is that it is not a true story. Men have in their minds a picture of how the world will be. How they will be in that world. The world may be many different ways for them but there is one world that will never be and that is the world they dream of. Do you believe that?
…
Some men get what they want.
No man. Or perhaps only briefly so as to lose it. Or perhaps only to prove to the dreamer that the world of his longing made real is no longer that world at all.”