I’ve not spent much time in Italy but I did live in Spain for years and really what he took pictures seems like the part of italy outside the norm, that have a sort of northern decrepid nature to them.  It’s what I missed when I lived here and found myself photographing in Spain while I was there as well.  It feels more like romania than typical italy, but then again if you adventure out into the “boring” parts of any country you end up finding these little nooks that can sometimes be visually scanned over.
I had a similar experience on my bike today on the south side of Chicago when I was with an friend looking at buildings that were for rent for a dream project I’m working on right now.   I just saw a whole corner that was only two blocks away that I’d never seen in 2 years, or never really paid attention to.  I find this is why photography really will always have something to talk about, even when we’ve somehow “covered it all”.  Someone will always find something new, some different angle, a new take.
My girlfriend was talking about novels at dinner and expressed a similar sentiment about writing and how good writers suck you in because they have this singular point of view that comes from their brain and they really take you somewhere.  It’s a different language that maybe describes visual moments but depends completely on words.  Photography maybe somewhat lyrical, but its completely visual.  There are no other senses to depend on, unlike cinema, and that singularity of the moment that a photograph is taken that makes the moment captured so arresting at times.
I personally love cinema, but I think why I was drawn to photography (other than literally having a camera forced into my hands at a young age) was the chance to freeze time, to condense a moment and to search out hidden places and moments.  I have a real point of view on everything so photography allows me to express that part of myself quite well.

Here’s a quick sample of wes’s images that’ll be printed large and luscious.

photo by Wesley Brown

photo by Wesley Brown

EB FW2011 from caleb condit on Vimeo.

kaleidoscope from caleb condit on Vimeo.

The most powerful photographs, in fact, steal our words. They resist explication or a resolution, refuse our comprehension, render us speechless. Stilling time, preserving the ghost of a moment to be revisited in perpetuity, photography conjures the past, feeds the present, and hints at the future. Mere words can hardly contend with the magic of its revelation.

There is always so much pressure to explain our images as photographers and I understand that because people need to categorize things and art historians want to know intentions but so many times I feel like that the most powerful thing shouldn’t be what you’ve said or an artist statement but rather your images as an artist.  They are their own language otherwise the artist would be an author of books instead.  I feel like I can speak and verbalize what I am trying to communicate or write the words but in the end, its the images that matter and its the images that are used to truly get the point across.

kelly from factor women (a quick behind the scenes vid) from caleb condit on Vimeo.