Transatlantic Tickets: For the love of Claire Fisher

The above images were found in various articles in The Guardian over the past two years. The last, of Aung San Suu Kyi (in Oxford?) in the Seventies, is one of my all time favourite photographs.

I was talking with a friend the other night about film versus digital photography, trying to explain that it's the process of film I like. The idea of a semi-accidental chemical reaction taking place, a little annunciation taking place in a box held in your hands. Not only that, but then the lack of immediacy--the having to wait. For instance, I've had a roll of Provia X in my bag for weeks now, and I now have little idea about what's on it. I know that I finished it in London, but where it begins, I can't remember. Months ago, most likely. A visit to the Freud Museum in there somewhere. And, the fact is, I love this. I love the patience and the surprise involved. I think I value the images more because they are embedded in time...And this, I suppose, is the most essential thing. I like memories. Not so much memories as they exist now, but real old memories. What you used to find leafing through old family photo albums, those slightly faded colours, times and places that pre-existed you. That is precisely what I aspire to, what I long for in photography and, perhaps, in art generally. The poignancy of a memory that calls you back, that haunts you from the pages of a family photo album. It's a look, a feel, I think I'm always striving for: the sticky-backed pages turning with an audible gasp, the images reflecting something both lost and found.