Images & Text By Emilian Avramescu

My Vision of Photography

It seems to me that too often, too comfortably, and too easily people talk about the story a photograph is supposed to tell (it’s a common cliché found in and around beginner photography courses). And I keep seeing and hearing that narrative threads are being sought out and alternative scenarios are being constructed around photographs. I believe that photography is, rather, poetry than story. You cannot explain why a certain photograph or image stays with you, just as you cannot explain why you resonate with a string of words in a poem. As I’ve said before, poetry and photography can at some point become indistinguishable, because both can be perceived with a kind of sixth sense. Trying to explain them, to narrate them, means destroying them both. Searching for and finding narrative threads in a photograph at any cost means, in my opinion, destroying its process of creation and perception. This led me to a form of photography that I call PhozEme.

What does PhozEme mean? It is an imperfect picture (most often taken with the phone in my pocket) of the thousands of perfect poems I have seen and continue to see with the eyes of my mind, but which I have not managed and will never manage to write down. I say this also because there was a time, somewhere during my student years, when I wrote using a kind of imagery, flirting somewhat with poetry. Thus, given my so-called poetic background, the idea of PhozEme was born—those images through which I try to suggest the relationship between photography and poetry as ineffable states that belong, rather, to the subliminal realm. I believe that the photographic image is not actually found in the device you work with, but somewhere long before the moment of releasing the shutter, in your mind, and also in an area that, to a large extent, you cannot control—because it is in the subconscious.

At its core, there is nothing new in what I call PhozEme. It is a simple idea that points to the connection between photography and poetry, a parallel noticed and developed by others as well over time—after the invention of photography and especially within the debates, still not concluded today, about recognizing photography as an art in itself.

As for my photographic style – if such a thing exists – I believe it lies in the realm of contemplative photography. In general, I remain at a distance from the subject, observing somewhat meditatively what is happening around me and, consequently, within the photographic frame. And I have found that, in most everyday situations, the phone in your pocket is the only and the best camera available to you. Therefore, relieved at last of the obsession of constructing a photographic oeuvre, I will continue to write PhozEme. I have chosen this path, and I am very curious where and through what places it will lead me.

All images and text © Emilian Avramescu

Edge of Humanity Magazine

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Photography & Philosophy

The freezing of a moment is a magical event. Images can make us feel love, rage and every sensation in between.

Photographers, whether partial or impartial to their subject matter, consume a massive amount of insight. Their participation cannot be substituted nor replicated. The moment is gone! The experiences will live in their minds and those encounters are immortalized in their photographs.

Edge of Humanity Magazine’s ‘Photography & Philosophy’ series will bring together the art and the mind of these fantastic creators.

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