Time and Imagination through a Camera

To walk, explore, and traverse the streets, the imagination dips in and out of light and shadow, objects loom, then pass as my feet march through time.

The city is time. The people are time. They all know it, they watch it, and I watch it too.

I have a machine that captures time.

Stop and lift the machine to my eye, looking through the frame, the lens that distorts, changes, pulls, pushes, stops the flow, then darkens or lightens time.

Streets full of time, movement, an imagined view of the world before me. My interpretation of a city — not yours, mine. Bide your time, and I’ll capture mine.

Time never stops, so they say, time is money, so they say. That’s it, money. Not here, not when I’m in time, the light, the shadows, the movement of life.

Let it flow, F stop what you can. Go shallow, or go deep, the lens will know what time it wants. Twist it, focus, and hold that frame. Click, click, click. Time captured in black and white tones.

Fading figures that disappear through small square holes then down ramps, stop — wait. Get on, travel in the dark passage of time. Stop, get off, walk slowly.

Wind that whips hair, flapping clothes that look like dog tails, faces scrutinize street clocks, shocked by time. Frame the face and click the button. I have captured time, are you in my time?

Imagination flows with time, I can’t see it flow, it passes along passages. I stand still, on a corner, and I watch. Shopping, talking, checking mobile phones for clocks. A watch that comes up with the flick of a wrist, looked at as if it’s an enemy travelling with you.

“Gosh! Look at the time.”

“Are you late? — then we must stop wasting our time.”

I point the camera and click, look at my screen. All in two seconds flat.

A passage of time stopped, or I stopped in that passage — I don’t know. Light and darkness, shapes and forms, all stopped in the time of my imagination. Did I create that?

I don’t know.