I have read somewhere, although where, I can’t remember (which leads me to suspect I’m making it up), that Vladimir Nabokov wrote his novels by scribbling sentences on 3×5 index cards then, when he had enough of them, played mix-and-match with the order until he had assembled something satisfactory. I have tried that method, but with little success. Linearity is my downfall. I want to spin the story out all in one go. Maybe that’s why I turn to photography whenever I’m tired of writing. An image allows me to evade some of the storytelling responsibility. The people I shoot come to the scene with ready made histories which they leak by dribs and drabs through the clothes they wear, the ways they move through the frame, their interactions with other people. I do none of the work here; I simply watch and record. If the scene suggests a story, it isn’t for me to advance it; that task falls to the viewer. My work was done the instant I released the shutter.
