Some of my favourite photographers don’t exist, they are characters in movies only. Timothy Spall as Maurice Hurley in Secrets & Lies with his quiet professional pride in the work he carries out. Dennis Hopper, as the raving, visionary, photojournalist in Apocalypse Now. More memorable though, is Harvey Keitel’s Auggie Wren, owner of a tobaccanist on the corner of Third Street and Seventh Avenue, in Paul Auster’s Smoke. Auggie’s “life’s work” is the collection of photographs he makes from the same spot, at the same time every day. As William Hurt’s writer Paul Benjamin struggles to comprehend the project, Auggie elaborates, ” They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You’ve got your bright mornings; your fog mornings; you’ve got your summer light and your autumn light; you’ve got your week days and your weekends; you’ve got your people in overcoats and galoshes and you’ve got your people in t-shirts and shorts. Sometimes same people, sometimes different ones. Sometimes different ones become the same, and the same ones disappear. The earth revolves around the sun and every day the light from the sun hits the earth from a different angle.” As Paul slows down, wondering on each image and the faces it contains, he realises his dead wife appears in many of them. “It’s Ellen. Look at her. My dear sweet darling, ” he speaks, before the scene fades out.
What a gift to be able to give to a friend, or a stranger indeed. The unexpected sight of a loved one one more time, living their life, unthinking of its end.
The movie came to mind recently, and sadly probably will more and more over the years as the numbers in my archives tick up. My town recently lost two dear men, men who passed in front of my camera. I believe one of the pictures will be used on the service programme of his funeral, the other for an obituary in local media. This is not a role I ever thought photography would play in my life, but there’s many things I didn’t expect from life which have to pass.
Paul: Slow down, huh?
Auggie: That’s what I’d recommend.
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