Wild Boy

Any boy might be a wild boy. When passing by shaggy-haired or preppy young men who might be hiding acres of longing behind their reticent expressions, a camera is needed to lengthen the encounter, to slow the moment down and allow it to fill with expectation.  I look at you looking at me. The face is a sign we are trained to read, but some messages are secret, and hidden, furtive as a hermit crab.  Am I equally inscrutable?

A camera indicates intention; with the apparatus held to my eye I signal interest.  The camera measures the space between us, intensifying the ache. The frame includes you and nothing else, only a few incidentals that serve as minor distractions from your charm. Do your lips taste of smoke? Can I run my fingers over your pronounced collarbone?

A photographer is a stranger who wishes not to be one. Yet without our strangeness we could not observe so closely, so vividly. We collect traces of our encounters in our darkened devices. Later, concocting alchemical baths we transform the ephemeral into shiny wet objects. There you are gazing into a field and there you are wearing that awkward striped shirt. I believe I have you now.

 

 

This text first appeared in piK Photography Magazine issue #9