Reflective Moment

So the box of (cousin) photos is sitting on the table next to my paints and bits and pieces. They are still cradled in the two plastic fruit trays I tipped them into on arrival. Although I know these photographs are simply pieces of paper covered in a special film, the object (photograph) seems to bring on a sense of 'other time' in my mind...I have been thinking about this over and over with past projects....How the absence of the people in them is made more poignant by the presence of the image sandwiched in the paper. As though the paper itself has captured something of their aura?

Whatever it is it feels quite monumental - at times comforting and at other times slightly threatening...

I will go back to reading Barthes, Berger and Sontag