Will Stacey’s collection of not taken photographs.
The Photographs Not Taken is a collection of essays by photographers about the times they didn’t use their camera. This collection is a series of photographs not taken with a camera, but, instead, lived and remembered. Here the basic set of rules that apply to the making of a photograph are put into reverse; instead of looking out into the world through a camera lens, this series of essays looks directly into the photographer’s eye and mind and focuses on where the photographs come from.
The photograph has been stripped-down to its most simple and primitive form: the idea, instinct, reaction, the before; while simultaneously opening the door for reflection, meaning, content and the after. Each photographer has been asked to abandon the familiar tools needed to make a photograph, camera, lens, film, all digital equivalents, etc, and now make a “photograph” with another set of tools: the memories, experiences and poetry of the world that didn’t go through the lens, the negative photographs, the anti-photographs, the photographs not taken with a camera but with the heart and mind.
