TO SHOOT PICTURES Wim Wenders

Taking pictures is an act in time, in which something is snapped out of its own time and
transferred into a different kind of duration. It is commonly assumed that whatever is captured in
this act lies IN FRONT OF the camera. But that is not true.
Taking pictures is an act in two directions: forwards and backwards. Yes, taking pictures
also backfires. This isnt even too lame a comparison. Just as the hunter lifts his rifle, aims at
the deer in front of him, pulls the trigger, and, when the bullet departs form the muzzle, is thrown
backwards by the recoil, the photographer, likewise, is thrown backwards, onto himself, when
releasing the shutter.
A photograph is always a double image, showing, at first glance, its subject, but at a
second glance more or less visible, hidden behind it, so to speak, the reverse angle: the
picture of the photographer in action.
Just as the hunter is not struck by the bullet, though, but only feels the recoil of the
explosion, this counter-image contained in every photograph is not actually captured by the
lens, either. (Yet it remains somehow inextricably in the picture, as an invisible impression of the
photographer, that even gets developed within the darkroom chemistry)
What then is the recoil of the photographer? How do you feel its impact? How does it
affect the subject, and which trace of it appears on the photograph?
In German, there is a most revealing word for this phenomenon, a word known from a
variety of contexts: EINSTELLUNG. It means the attitude in which someone approaches
something, psychologically or ethically, i.e. the way of attuning yourself and then taking it in.
But Einstellung is also a term from photography and film signifying both the take (a particular
shot and its framing), as well as how the camera is adjusted in terms of aperture and exposure
by which the cameraman takes the picture.
It is no coincidence that (at least in German) the same word defines both the attitude
and the picture thus produced. Every picture indeed reflects the attitude of whoever took it.
So the riflemans recoil corresponds to the photographers portrait that is more or less
visible behind the picture, only instead of capturing his (or her) features, it defines the
photographers ATTITUDE towards whatever was in front of him (or her).
The camera therefore is an eye capable of looking forwards and backwards at the same
time. Forwards, it does in fact shoot a picture, backwards, it records a vague shadow, sort of
an x-ray of the photographers mind, by looking straight through his (or her) eye to the bottom of
his (or her) soul. Yes, forwards, a camera sees its subject, backwards it sees the wish to capture
this particular subject in the first place, thereby showing simultaneously THE THINGS and THE
DESIRE for them.
Every second, somewhere in the world, someone releases a shutter capturing
something because he (or she) is fascinated by a certain LIGHT or FACE or GESTURE or
LANDSCAPE or MOOD or simply because a SITUATION wants to be captured.
The subjects of photography, obviously, are countless, multiplied to infinity by every
second that passes. Still, each and every moment of picture-taking, wherever in the world it
takes place, is a single event, its uniqueness guaranteed by the incessant progress of time.
(Even the zillions of tourists snapshots at those specially assigned photo opportunities are
each a one-time-only event. Even in its most trivial and commonplace moments time remains
irreversible.)

What is astonishing with each and every photograph is not so much that it freezes
time as people commonly think but that on the contrary time proves with every picture anew
HOW unstoppable and perpetual it is.
Every photograph is a memento mori. Every photograph talks about life and death.
Every picture captured has an aura of sacredness, transcends the eye of its photographer, and
exceeds all human capacity: every photo is also an act of creation outside of time, from Gods
perspective, so to speak, recalling that increasingly forgotten commandment: Thou shalt not
graven images.
To take pictures (rather: to have the incredible privilege of taking pictures) is too good
to be true. But just as well it is too true to be good. Taking pictures is always an act of
presumption and rebellion. Taking pictures thus quickly instills greed and so much less often
modesty. (That is the reason why the attitude of bragging is much more common in photography
than the attitude of humbleness.)
If, thus, a camera shoots in two directions, forwards and backwards, merging both
pictures so that the back dissolves in the front, it allows the photographer at the very moment
of shooting to be in front with the subjects, rather than separated from them. Through the
viewfinder the viewer can step out of his shell to be on the other side of the world, and
thereby remember better, understand better, see better, hear better, and love more deeply. (and,
alas, despise more deeply, too. The evil eye, after all, exists as well.)
Within every photograph there is also the beginning of a story starting Once upon a
time Every photograph is the first frame of a movie. Often the next moment, the next release
of the shutter a few steps further on, the subsequent image, that is, is already tracing this storys
progress in its very own space and its very own time. So over the years, at least to me, taking
pictures has more and more turned into tracing stories. () With every second picture the
montage is already on the way, and the story that has announced itself in the first picture is
now moving into its own direction, defining its sense of space and portending its sense of time.
Sometimes new actors appear, sometimes the alleged lead proves to be just a supporting part,
and sometimes no person at all is at the center, but a landscape.
I firmly believe in the story-building power of landscapes. There are landscapes, be they
cities, deserts, mountains, or coasts, that literally cry out for THEIR STORIES to be told. They
evoke them, even make them happen. Landscapes can be leading characters themselves and
the people in them the extras.
I believe just as firmly in the narrative power of props. An open newspaper, casually
lying in the corner of a photograph, can relate so much! A billboard in the background! The
rusting car protruding into one side of the picture! A chair! Standing there in such a way that
someone must have been sitting on it only moments ago! An open book on a table with half of
its title legible! The empty cigarette box on the sidewalk! The coffee cup with the spoon in it! On
photographs, THINGS can be serene or sad, even comic or tragic.
Let alone clothes! In many pictures, they are the most interesting part. The sagging
sock on a childs ankle! The turned-up collar of a man who we can only see from behind! Sweat
stains! Creases! Patches darned and mended! Missing buttons! A crisply ironed shirt! A womans
life all summarized in her dress, her entire life showing in the sufferings of a dress! A persons
drama conveyed by a coat! Clothes indicate the temperature of a picture, the date, the time of
day, time of war, or time of peace.
And all of it appears in front of the camera just ONCE, and every photograph turns this
once into an eternity. Only THROUGH the captured picture does time become visible and in the
time span BETWEEN the first shot and the second the story emerges, a story that, were it not
for these pictures, would have slipped into oblivion for the same eternity.

Just as we want to disappear, out into the world and into the things, at the very moment
of taking the picture, the world and the things now leap out of the photograph at the beholder,
seeking to survive and to last there. It is THERE that the stories come about, in the eye of the
beholder. ()
WIM WENDERS. Once pictures and stories. Munich, Schirmer/Mosel, 2001.