Photography is an instrument that shifts across varying paths and borders, thus making itself it's own "sovereign". The use of this universal instrument allows the creation of a transparent collective, and the ability for everyone to become a part of. This is how the idea of collective citizenship can represent a person as a representation of the past, present, and future state of mode in the states they've lived in. We are "entering a dialogue" with a persons photographed, in which their power is often times "both silent and silenced".
Giving up the idea that photography is about "me" and my involvement to the subject opens up the entire word of photography as a communicative medium. By gaining the confidence and trust in order to willingly put yourself into the world of photography, as both the spectator and the spectated, this is enabling a full circle to come around, a relationship to form between the viewer and the viewed. Letting yourself be the witness and only letting yourself be the witness is an ignorance that misses the whole point of the subjects involved in the evolving photo process. Giving equity to one another gives the other a staple of trust, and with it comes communication, and with communication comes beautiful work that is understood through both photographer and photographed.
This equity of understanding allows the audience to delve into subjects much more bigger than the individual. Once given each other the opportunity to honestly communicate, the viewer and the viewed can learn things that span borders and limitations, and be able to empathize and relate to each others stories through this representation of an exchange of information that they created when they made the moment in the photograph.
The individual of subject will always be the focus, but the collective individual community represented by the image of that one subject is a reinforcement for all the other individuals who are living in the same shared experience.
In the ideal moment.
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