My favorite photograph

My favorite photograph, or at least the photograph that is most important to me, is a snapshot of me at the zoo. I am about three or four years old and I am climbing gleefully on a copper statue of a gorilla. This photo is dear to me because I am familiar with it only removed from its most intimate context. I did not discover this photo until about ten years after in was taken; in this sense, the meaning that I derive from it is tied largely to some sense of retrospective longing. When I first laid eyes on this photograph, I was not particularly struck by its composition or form but I was enraptured by its representation of some sort of timeless complacency. The photo functions for me in a specific and unique way. From my removed perspective and because I never occupied any more direct perspective, I am able to charge the image with a special kind of contradictory meaning. For me, the photo contains at the same time a speculative and immediate presence, one that, while entirely disassociated from the captured moment, must, because of the represented subject, operate on a kind of invisible self-reflexivity. The picture depicts an alien version of myself, one that I have no knowledge of and no connection to. My approach to the image is a very different approach I take to any other picture of myself. This strange power of the captured image is what draws me to photography.