Lumen Falsum

In October 2009 I stood by the sea through the night, chasing flashes that tore the horizon open. In one frame the sky split itself: orange from the city, blue from the storm, purple where they collided. A man passed carrying a closed umbrella. I thought he was mad to be walking at that hour, and he must have thought the same of me, standing in the dark with a tripod pointed at the black sea.

The photographs are not what we saw. The sea was black, the air heavy, the night close to nothing. The man with the umbrella and I stood in front of a void. Only when the lightning struck for a split second did the camera seize what the eye could not. It stretched that instant into a picture that looks fixed. But it is not truth. It is a fraction of a second trying to last.