Visiting a shop in the camera district in Paris, I purchased an old manual flash for twenty-six Euros.  I have never used a manual flash before, but after taking my first photograph, it became clear that I should have been using it since the very beginning of my trip. Upon arriving in Rome, both the crowds and the way in which people take photographs had fascinated me.  The gestures associated with the digital camera were so different than those of the analogue camera, that I could not resist photographing the act. 

This camera I am using does not look through the lens, but rather through a separate viewfinder.  I always found the paradox of most other cameras intriguing: the moment of the photograph is the only moment invisible to the photographer, the shutter closing just long enough to transfer the image to the negative.  The photographer would see the moments leading up to and after the photograph, but never the actual moment in time.

Though I will not see the negatives for quite some time, I can vividly imagine the effect that the flash is producing on my ‘camera portraits’.  My own camera in one hand, my new flash in the other.  Through the viewfinder I see the flash of light gently sculpting; I see the moment, the exact moment, which the shutter is released for the first time.  I imagine capturing them as if they are being bathed in the light of their digital screens and lost in the fantasy world of the photographic image.

I imagine what these places would look like in complete darkness, illuminated only by the backs of everyone’s digital cameras.