Optical Device

Roland Barthes wrestles with the medium of photography in his book Camera Lucida. His perspective-- as the spectator, viewer, even an interpreter.

What other medium captures a moment, stops time in its tracks? Barthes writes that the photographer has found the right moment- the kairos. That moment can't be replicated. Even the next frame freezes a different moment.

When I found a photo of my grandmother as a young woman I, too, entered a different time frame. That photograph stopped the future. I met her in that space as if the future was yet unwritten.

"Time," Barthes writes, "eliminates the emotion of loss..."