i’m not sure that i came to a definitive point of view on the questions that have been present in my mind the last couple of weeks, so i’m writing everything down, here, in the hope that it will all gather up and make some sense, in the end, somehow.
i have the feeling that all these thoughts i’ve tried to share, about artistic creation and what it is to be an artist, about doubts, about the multiple processes of creation, about being a thief versus being a creator, all these trains of thoughts are connected somehow, and i still need to figure out a lot of these connections, even if some of them are pretty obvious.

i light a cigarette.

i have decided that maybe, i’m not a thief after all, because as you said, i’m not taking anything from the people i picture, at least literally, like a shoe or a watch. right. maybe even, they’re gaining something in the process. maybe. i could go as far as saying that they’re revealed and exposed, at least a part of them, the very same part that i capture.
to capture. it’s a common word for seizing the moment, the instant, the decisive fraction of second, yet, i find this word rather physical, down to earth, for something unpalpable. a moment. an instant. a breath. an eyeblink.
still, i wander unnoticed, and i capture a part of them. i take it. i think i want to call this part of them beauty, because that’s what i’m looking for, ultimately. if i take it, then it was there before i passed by, but if i take it, does it stay theirs, or does it become mine ? or both ?
maybe both. but it isn’t fair if it becomes mine. i just make an image out of it, therefore, it belongs to the image, not me. the fact that the image is mine doesn’t matter, there’s just their beauty, and the potential beauty of the image.

My Inseparable argued to me today that she finds herself beautiful only on MY images. now here we have another problem, i guess. i argued back that it’s pretty easy to make look beautiful people beautiful on images. she retorted that I could make someone ugly look beautiful, to which i replied that it was a purely hypothetical guess, because i’ve never pictured someone ugly so far.
but now that i think about it, i think that i have pictured someone who isn’t the least beautiful, and she found herself gorgeous on the pictures. (and no, it isn’t likely that she would be one of my readers, so be reassured, you beautiful people)
it ruins my other point that i would have to know and love the people i’m making pictures of, in order to capture their beauty, because i disliked that woman i’m talking about above. i know i could have cheated and omitted that example, but i’m in a mood for honesty. now of course, it’s a LOT easier to picture beautiful people, you just can’t make something awful with them, that is, if you have a slight idea of what good taste is.

alright. so people don’t always need to be beautiful to have some kind of beauty for me to capture, and i don’t always need to know them well and love them. maybe i can say at this point that the matter is just to love people enough, whether i know well them or not, to be able to see that inner beauty in them – even when it isn’t obvious – and capture it.

but if it’s really like that, then i love people far too much to be as asocial as i think i am. that’s another thing falling down tonight. yet it’s leading to something else. i’m not thinking that i love everyone the same way, that would be a lie, but maybe it’s that very distance and independance that i have with the people i love, that allows me to see something that i wouldn’t see otherwise. then what about the people i don’t like or know ? simple, if i don’t like them, nor know them, it’s even easier to see what emanates from them, it’s as instictive though.

now back at the thief problem. i said that i steal what i picture, because it would be incredibly selfish and pretentious and vain for me to say that it’s mine after the picture is made. beauty was never mine in the first place, i don’t create it when i take unnoticed snapshots of people – how could i ?? you don’t make beauty, it’s always there to be found – so it isn’t even mine in the end. nothing really belongs to me, and the pictures i post in here, they’re just kilobits of datas, zeros and ones. negatives are just pieces of plastic and prints, pieces of paper. everything will fade or burn down eventually.

when i thought about that, i got another idea. i don’t want pictures to be eternal, they’re just representations of instants, so i want to give them a limited time. in order to achieve that, i want to make digital pictures, print one and only copy of the most beautiful ones, sell the whole of them and simply erase the original files. since inkjet papers last between five and…huh…fifteen years, depending on which conditions they’re stored, the picture will slowly lose its sharpness, its contrast, it will fade, go away forever, like the times that i’ve pictured. the only thing that will stay a bit more will be the memories of both the picture, and the event. then, in a hundred years, everything will be forgotten and buried deep, and why should it be better otherwise ?

and now, where am i at this point ?
i have admitted, that maybe, i say maybe, i can see something in people, and as seeing without being able to seize it would be useless for me, maybe i also have an ability to capture it. alright. i admit. maybe.
so i’m both an observer, and a “capturer”.

which leads me to think that i’m lucky that capturing other people’s beauty isn’t a crime punished by law, or i’d be in jail for a nice bit of time…
and sometimes, i’m thinking about restraining me, refraining my impulsion, letting it go from me, stopping.

but if i did, who would i be and where would i go ?