52 photographs (2018) #45: The frame within the frame

52 photographs (2018) #45: The frame within the frame

It’s often been remarked that photography is easy — you just point the camera and click the shutter. But yes, just where do you point the camera and when do you press the shutter? Looking through the viewfinder of a camera like a Leica is wonderful because it makes this choice obvious — provided you have chosen the right focal length for your viewfinder, looking through the eyepiece you see a floating grey square with space around the edges, reminding you that over there, that is where the photograph is. Or it could be a little to the left. It is up to you.

So at Montsouris last autumn they re-installed a series of panels describing the history of the park and Parisian parks in general during the second Empire. There are interesting stories. The engineer responsible for the artificial lake in Montsouris committed suicide because on the day of the park’s opening a technical error mean that all the water had drained from the lake! And for the display, why have photographs? We are after all standing in Montsouris itself. They simply put a square frame neatly enclosing the landscape. This is where the photograph is.

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