Most of the truly riveting or memorable things we’ve seen reside in still photographs that freeze a fleeting moment and hold it for us forever. That captured snap of a shutter opening and closing allows us to go back and be there at that narrow second, and in the process to become privy to something that we would miss completely in watching video of the same subject. A friend recently sent me a collection of still photographs that included one of Che Guevara sipping a smoothie. The picture was a revelation. I kept staring at it. It showed you a side of the man, a relaxed peaceful side, that is completely at odds with everything you’ve seen and heard about him. It was a shock. In one brief captured moment, it shows a playful and even gentle aspect of the Cuban revolutionary that you would never have imagined existed. In that frozen moment, it stood out.
Unlike a video, with subjects constantly in motion, expression changing, body language shifting, the still photograph can often capture the essence of a person, in a sheer accident that would otherwise go by unobserved. During the time I lived in Cayman, for example, there was a crafty British Governor there who was an energetic and articulate fellow but also known to be devious, a schemer, always manoeuvering and seeking to recruit influential persons to his causes. Wading through the photo file at the local newspaper one day, I ran into a candid shot of the Governor at a Government House function. He was holding a
