What do you actually see?

I was having coffee with a fellow photographer recently and we got to talking about how truth in a photograph exist when you photograph what you actually see. With that conversation in mind, I returned to the work of Jeff Wall who recreates all of his photographs from memory. There is a more real truth to Jeff’s work, in his mind, because the actual reality of the images is based on what sticks with him after he sees a scene. Based on that memory, he goes out and recreates what he “truthfully” saw.

As I got to thinking about Jeff’s statement and the conversation. I realized that in many ways our goal of being present behind the camera is as much about finding our own truth and understanding of the world as it is making photographs. In the end, it is our ability to translate what we see into how we construct the world that photographs matter.