These are pictures I did not take.

Following on from last week's task, I was inspired by Michael David Murphy's 'Unphotographable' website, to write my own 'unphotographs'. This notion excites me, and is something that I part stumbled on a little while ago. Frustrated by photographs that were often a let down to what my eye experienced (this is as likely a fault of my technical ability) I started to take satisfaction in simply looking and remembering, of taking photographs without a camera. I would still use my eye, and then my memory to fix the image in my mind. It may not be as accurate nor as defined as a camera's depiction, but it is equally if not more loaded with my emotion, with my artistic bias, with the subjectivity of my memory - which in a way makes the image more my creation. I may not be able to show it visually, but I can still share it descriptively. At the time I could only label this little revelation with the very lame title of 'Lookography'. To have discovered Murphy's site, and his solid execution of this idea is very encouraging. So now I'd like to share two of my own 'unphotographs' which I've had stored for a while.


This is a photograph I did not take of a young, probably second or third generation, British-Indian woman, standing in front of her colourful, well-stacked perfume stall, in the brightly lit glass entrance-way of a shopping centre. She stands with a confident pose, weight on one leg, and stylishly dressed in red and black, whilst her eyes move from one passer-by to the next as she seeks out her next potential customer. The bright sunlight shatters through the glass, reflects off the white-tilled floor, and surrounds her dark hair, skin, and clothes, with a pearlescent mist.


This is a photograph I did not take, at the evening of a Folk Festival, looking in through a caravan doorway at a man and his three year old daughter facing each other, lit by a single dim light in the low ceiling. The man, tall, with his hands on hips, looks down at his daughter, frowning slightly, and thoughtfully, having just asked her what she wants for her dinner. She looks back up at him, with an expression which perfectly describes her innocence and uncertainty, whilst trying to think of an answer.