3:49, in a Café

Jonathan Giammaria 3:49, in a Café

By means unknown to me—shamefully so, with a technology whose relevance has been on the upswing after a twenty-year period of obscurity—the film camera took a picture. Rather, I should say that I pressed a trigger, which opened the shutter, exposing the film to light, and plastered my physical space into fiction. On being asked, and as a way to display a mastery whose description as such is confirmed by the assumptions of others, I tell those who are curious that I can spin a story out of iron wool. Capturing a photo assigns worth to a place whose regular visitation creates its unremarkable familiarity. Chance alignment of people and places produces the conditions for a story, and I connect the tissue, guided by an aspect ratio, which otherwise remains segmented. What I mean to say is that I took a picture of a crane—we’re speaking of the animal, not the machine. A note, also, on the verb taking. It’s been a trend recently to say that we make photos. The parlance has drifted into common usage just as film has overtaken the traditional practice of digital photography. “Making photos” is the epitome of a withdrawn credence from your subjects, completely fictionalized, under the authority of a creator. But there is always the camera, always the conditions that make the photo, which are uncontrollable, save for the context of a studio, which I despise. That crane found itself in the city by means of which I have no idea. Pragmatically speaking, the crane flew out of its context and into ours. Searching for reasons behind such a thing is narrative. Pay attention to who is making the story. In the photo, you sit in the bottom left corner. I positioned you there, aligned you with the borders of my viewfinder. When I saw you, perception was a flashbulb, a split-second reaction that favoured a personalized fiction over an agreed-upon reality. It’s a clever trick, rationalizing the documentation of photography as art. With my photos, I have never shown you what happened, not really. At the risk of contradicting myself, the appeal of pho

tography is that no other artform can rival its indexicality. You sat at the café’s terrace. Documentation disregards the notion of memory. In fact, documentation opposes memory, whose claim on objectivity is undone by its process of subjective reconstruction. Memory might have led me to say that you were drinking a latte. Documentation tells me that you were drinking a filter coffee. If we zoom in on your table, we can see that you are reading Lolita. “No,” you say, “I’m not reading Lolita.” “I could’ve sworn you were reading Lolita,” I say. You pull the book from under the apron crumpled on your knees. You show me what you are reading. The book’s spine is a division of black and white, and the book’s cover is an abstraction, facilitated by a heavy close up, of a pair of lips. But the book is not Lolita. “What?” I say, gesturing to it, “I’ve never even heard of it. Wouldn’t it be more interesting to say you were reading Lolita? If I were looking at a photograph of someone reading Lolita, there would suddenly be an air of intrusive perversion.” “It’s not the truth,” you say. “Okay, we’ll chalk up the confusion to the photo’s poor resolution.” “But I’m holding it right in front of you.” You’re excited to unravel your opinion of me now. You are a philistine but—. You tell me I’m intellectually bankrupt, and that all my contemplations are interloping puzzle pieces that don’t fit with each other. You tell me that my digressions have been offensive, that there isn’t a point to any of what I’m saying. You tell me that a story should have some sort of progressive flow. You tell me that I can never expect a reader to sympathize with my cold and inorganic diction. (You don’t say it like this, by the way. I’m rephrasing your words so that they don’t appear so crude. I’m doing you a favour, really. I’m making you coherent.) I’m all contradiction, borne by my desire to probe at that which is all surface. You tell me that

photography is a defunct artform, and that I’m close reading a text whose intention is a product of my retroactive mind, not of a desire that spurred the photographic conception. And, by the way, how did I develop the photo so quickly? You tell me— Enough, I’ll continue telling the story now, thank you so much. The author is dead. Try to be more open minded. We’re sitting at a café— “How many times are you going to repea—” We’re sitting at a café, and if someone were to make a photo of us—“not take?”—they might assume that we’ve been enjoying a Sunday brunch. They wouldn’t assume that you brought me here to discuss matters outside of this photo’s borders. I think you told me that there was something important you had to tell me. Let’s talk some more about this crane. From the way that it’s hunched, with its wings not completely at rest, we’ll assume that it’s just landed. We’ll assume that the crane is turning to look at the glint of a camera, though not quick enough to look at that which captures it. We can also assume that the crane has only just appeared. No one in the picture has turned their attention to it. That seems a little strange. Have you noticed that there’s a man in the photo, right behind the pane of glass that marks the border of the café? In the photo, desaturated highlights and darks mesh together to abstract that which has already been flattened. He’s a ghost behind a pane of glass, behind my camera’s lens, behind the matte finish of this enlarged celluloid. I might never have seen him if you hadn’t pointed him out to me. I’ve just noticed that he’s looking at you. He’s wearing a black apron, and he has a stainless-steel foaming pitcher in his right hand. My right. Actually, he’s glaring at you, and I’ve just noticed that, crumpled in your lap with its strings hanging off the edges of your knees, you have the same apron. And there’s still that book of yours. The café in this photo is the one we’re sitting in

right now— At this point you interrupt me again. Yes, okay, so you’ve made it clear that you were fired today. I should’ve brought that up. You talk to me and that same man stands behind that same pane of glass. He seems perturbed, and I find it inappropriate that since the release of my shutter he hasn’t stopped watching you. Let me tell you something of stories. A story is an accumulation of ideas stitched together by the narrator. I’ve stolen the story from you again because I want to present my version of the truth. Without the index of a photo, the truth is just an idea. Nevertheless, my idea is that I took a picture of a crane. My next idea is that I was so possessed by the serendipity of the crane that, although I still had thirty-five shots left in my camera, I packed up. I called it a day. I entered the café. Let’s suppose that, upon exiting the café, I noticed that you were on my right. You were crying. I watched you cry. You were looking down at your knees. On your knees, not-Lolita rested. We are sitting together at this café. I face you, and behind us is the pane of glass with the man in it. There is a book on your knees. It is not Lolita. I’m internalizing your complaints. How many times am I going to revisit this scene? We are sitting in a café and on our table rests the picture of the crane. If I were to look up now, I would see a bird in the sky. You look and you see the bird in the sky. The beauty of film photography is that the delay between the break of light and the realization of one’s creation is mediated by one’s will towards tangibility itself. I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ve allowed you to speak. But really, you have to let me go on for just a few more moments. I promise I won’t waste any more of your time. Actually, I want to move us back a few moments. It was only when the crane flew away that the café’s patrons paid it any attention. Of course, in the index of this photo, the

camera never recorded a reaction. Freezing an action requires that its precedence and consequence remain obscure, a blank slate for an observer to intuit. We’ll look around now at the patrons, as the bird flies away. Tell me, how are they acting? Have they turned back to their coffees and laptops? And tell me about the man in the pane of glass. Did he ever notice the bird? You tell me that he hasn’t stopped looking at you, not even for a second. In a way, neither have I. My eyes have been filtered by the lens of the camera. That’s where you are. Then I sat down and here we are together. Tangibly, we have moved past the photo. You’re complaining that I’m drifting into digressions again. If I might, I’d like to adjust that statement. I’m circling back to the digressions from which you distracted me. You tell me that we still haven’t arrived at anything important. Tell me, how well do we actually know each other, that you should insist on importance? And how well do you know that man? And why, amidst a crane who appears dynamic, do you and he remain static? That apron is still crumpled on your lap. “I need to tell you something,” you say. I know! Haven’t I been talking this whole time about how you need to tell me something? The photo’s conception revolves around you needing to tell me something. Maybe if we look at the photo closely and list the elements of its composition, we’ll be able to figure it out. We’ll arrive at that which so urgently needs to be broached. You, the man, and the crane. You tell me that maybe the crane is relevant. Is that humour? No, of course not, how could the crane factor into such a thing? You, bottom-left; man, front and center; crane, foregrounded in front of the man. I don’t think we’ll ever arrive at that which lies beneath the surface of this photo. I’m sorry, but the crane is just too appealing. You’ll have to remind me why later, but our lingering contemplations sharpen into acute observations. Despite my

thoughtful contributions, a lull crawls into our conversation. It’s unfortunate, but just as you start to unfold your perspective, my eyes creep past the borders of your face. Dynamic change traverses from our interpersonal exchange towards the conditions of our surroundings. The elements of this frame are expanding, becoming unrecognizable! I get up and you try to stop me. I’m sorry but I have to be quick if I’m going to capture the next shot in this confluence of narrative. Can’t you see that narrative cannot be planned? Can’t you see that, no matter the rigidity of an outline, narrative escapes the photographer? I was never trained to subjugate the conditions of the narrative. It moves along without intention. I cannot push it into being. The man in the glass has finally moved. A car is about to pass us by. The sun is setting. Let me make this photo and I’ll bring it right back to you. We’ll discuss the production of this photo. You and I will toil over this image until the next one comes along. Don’t you see that this is the only way for the story to progress? There is no attempt at consequence without the documentation of that which follows the present. There cannot be a gesture towards antecedence without the documentation of that which has preceded this new photo. This photo of the crane will become that antecedent. And you have to let me persevere towards that which follows. It’s the only way to continue chasing after the narrative. It’s the only way to make a photo.