If you want to see something, you have to hurry. Everything disappears. Paul Cézanne

(About VIGILANCE)

This is a call for conscious looking. This time the quote is not from a photographer. Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter (1839 - 1906). One of his main themes was painting still lifes, another was painting landscapes. A main feature of his work is his intense observation of simplicity - apples, pears, lemons in his still lifes, or trees, hills, plains in his landscapes - all coming to life through colour and light. All these objects in his paintings are pretty static and we don't have to be quick, because they do not disappear. It is all about the light in which the objects or the scenery appear. The light casts a certain mood or magic over a scene, caught in Cézanne's paintings and with it a fleeting moment of beauty turned eternal being captured by the artist in his paintings, just like with photography. These moments of unique and fleeting beauty must have been fascinating for Cézanne. Not one of his still life paintings looks like another, they all depict basically similar type of fruit, but appear at the same time so diverse. I have learnt to be vigilant for the magic of the fleeting moments of beauty, but still find that the most frustrating aspect of being a photographer is the fact that I SEE so many more beautiful moments than I ever can turn into photographs! The abundance of beautiful moments is overwhelming at times, and in appreciating this I can relate to Cézanne's saying and also his concentration on similar subjects again and again, chasing the magic of the moment. I feel drawn into such attempts as well, when I find myself photographing a similar situation over and over again in search of some special magic which I have perceived or sensed in it, but so far haven't been able to capture it adequately with a photograph.
It is magic in itself to follow these calls of vigilance and exploration, because there always seems to be another possibility for a new revelation of fleeting beauty, unseen this way before, something beyond of what was possible so far. As hunters and gatherers of fleeting moments, photographers enjoy this thrilling chance to catch that very special one, the chance to show it to the world in a photograph, and the chance to offer some exciting new visual discovery and memory to other people by the way of their view of this particular moment of life.
Just imagine for a moment, if you have to be quick to see the magic something in static things or situations, how quick you need to be to catch it in movement…. There is no "one way" of achieving this, which works for all, but there is your "own way" of getting there. Find your own way and you will not need to know anymore how others did it. Start to be vigilant and discovery will follow.


Find out more about
Paul Cézanne

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Photography Challenges

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Maja Moritz Photography


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