The camera excels at freezing time and space,
at capturing a moment, at rendering a scene in exact and vivid detail.
Our long standing acceptance of this, our unconscious conviction that
something must have been before the lens, imbues a photograph with
a sense of reality, of truth.
I am drawn, however, to the camera’s ability to distort, to isolate,
to flatten, to merge, and in doing so to reveal mystery and beauty
often bypassed or hidden within everyday scenes
My photos reveal empty places, stage sets awaiting actors.
fragments extracted from context, glimpses into a different world.
However, these works are incomplete without your active participation.
Therefore I invite you, the viewer, to enter, to populate these empty scenes,
to imagine what has happened and what is about to take place.
I invite you to shape these fragments to your imagination. I invite you
to find context, to provide content, a place, a beginning or an end.
I invite you to open the doors of your imagining to these images as you would
to shapes in the sky or stories in the fire.
Robert Hesse, Winchester, MA