I love looking at old photographs;
it's the closest thing to time travel that I know. I find myself staring at
century-old black and white photos taken on the streets of large cities. I look
at the people. I search their faces, wondering what was going on in their minds.
Often they are turning toward the camera—an item that was much less common
then—with a shocked expression. They seem as fascinated to be a part of the
captured moment as I am to witness it.
Here's an odd question: How much
time is captured in a still image? The shutter speeds of the earliest cameras
were so slow that in some old photos you see the ghostly, blurred images of
people who were walking by while the shutter was open. It's as if the camera was
trying to show a full second of reality in a single image...
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