“Reading American photographs is also a way of reading the past-not just the scenes recorded and the faces immobilized into permanent images, but the past as culture, as ways of thinking and feeling, as experience”

“Somewhere between what the lens depicts and what the caption interprets, a mental picture intervenes, a cultural ideology defining what and how to see, what to recognize as significant.”

“The daguerreotype reproduces what appeared before a lens at a particular moment and never again-its appearance is simultaneous with its disappearance, its death.”

“But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images that shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?”

“...most people would rather feel guilty than feel helpless. ”

“We think that the world is limited and explained by its past. We tend to think that what happened in the past determines what is going to happen next, and we do not see that it is exactly the other way around! What is always the source of the world is the present; the past doesn't explain a thing. The past trails behind the present like the wake of a ship and eventually disappears.”

“In the middle of my depression, somebody told me about a self-helpgroup for people who wanted to persue personal visions, and I thoughtthat might be just the thing for me, since I no longer had any. So Iwent to this Goals Meeting. It was in an Episcopal church in the leafysuburbs, and when I walked inside, a nice lady was explaing that herGoal was to get out of debt and buy a pony for her little daughter. Then this other fellow got up to share. He was a white boy in adashiki. He said, "My name is Ira and I have a Goal. Right now I'munemployed and in debt and I'm living with my parents, who don'tunderstand me at all. But my faith in this program is so huge that Iknow that one year from today I'm going to be traveling across theUnited States with my Spirit Guide. My Spirit Guide is going to be awhile malamute dog named Isis. I mean, I know this as clearly as I'veknown anything in my life. My Goal is for Isis to guide me to thehomes of my favorite self-help authoers. Isis is going to take me tomeet John Bradshaw and Louise Hay and M. Scott Peck, and I'm going toget them to mentor me!" He kind of bellowed this. And I wasn't surewhether Ira was exactly what John Bradshaw and Louise Hay and M. ScottPeck deserved or whether I hoped they kept shotguns in their homes. Iwas honestly torn.”