On Presence
“The photographer’s ardor for the subject … is, above all, an affirmation of the subject’s thereness.” (Susan Sontag, On Photography)
Sometimes the subject’s “thereness,” its presence to itself, is so intense that it transcends the photographic frame — the very space created to enclose, hold it, keep it in place. I think that is, fundamentally, what photography aims to do — circumscribe the subject, put a border around it and then watch it grow and expand beyond that boundary, watch it become not just present but intensely present, inhabiting a kind of timeless now, a space where it can simply be.
Is this what being alive means? To be fully present to oneself, fully embodied at the moment of exposure, not only unafraid of the other’s gaze but welcoming of it? To face the camera with absolute self-consciousness, which is really the consciousness of being alive now, of being nothing else and nobody else. “Here I am, this is my body ; I am my body,” I can almost hear her say through the mask that does not and cannot silence her.
Maybe the only way to feel alive is to accept that being begins (and ends) in the body. I know I feel alive at this moment, in this now, held in the intensity of Eloise’s gaze, in her fully embodied, graceful presence, her pure and unabashed thereness.
This photo is currently one of the finalists in this year’s Salt Spring Island Art Price (SSNAP), a biennial competition and exhibition of Canadian visual art. For more information https://saltspringartprize.ca/about/
Kali Spitzer is a Canadian Indigenous photographer https://kalispitzer.photoshelter.com/index
