Imagine looking through two photographs: an empty dining room, then the same room full of people. You’d probably think the evening was getting started.
Swap them round and it feels as though everyone has gone home.
I find it funny how quickly we do that. Two pictures, and we’ve already decided what happened. Add someone with their head in their hands and we may start wondering whether dinner went badly. They could just be laughing.
We do quite a lot of this while swiping through other people’s weekends.
Paris Photo returns to the Grand Palais from 12 to 15 November, with photobooks and the Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards in the programme. A book gives you time to notice what happens between pictures. Alex Webb has written about finding connections among photographs left out of earlier books while putting together Dislocations. Pictures that hadn’t fitted elsewhere began to make sense together.
Alex Webb, Seville, Spain, 1992. From Dislocations (Aperture, 2023). Courtesy the artist. Source: Aperture.
That’s one of the pleasures of looking through a well-chosen album. After a run of faces, you get to see the room. After the big group photograph, perhaps two people having a quiet word. You begin to feel you were there for a little of it.
I think I’d leave our empty dining room near the end. Chairs out of place, a glass still on the table. A few moments to linger after everyone else has left, especially as we won’t be expected to help with the washing-up.
