Emotions. Where do they go when everything is done and the lights are out ? What happens to these instant of joy, sorrow, pain, love and emptiness once the moment is over and the stage has been cleared?
They can be recounted, sometimes, partially, with our words and our hands, if we are fortunate to encounter an eye witness. They can be tentatively described in long articles, under cover of a feeble attempt to explain, to understand. But most of the time, emotions evaporate as soon as the moment vanishes, replaced by others, often less telling.
Photography, often unwillingly, captures these emotions and carry them across time, and space, unaltered. Like an artery connecting all of us, anywhere, anytime, they transmit emotions from one person to another, unbothered by race, culture, wealth or education. A cry of pain is the same for all of us, as well as the smile of victory or the compassionate eyes of sympathy. Besides being present as a witness, there is no better, stronger tool to transmit emotions than photography.
Even in a civilization obsessed with motion, videographing its every activity, we always return to photography to capture, and share, emotion. You would think, for example, that no one would ever photograph their wedding since they can film it all. But no, there is always a photographer. Why ? To capture the emotion.
We cannot combat it. We are in fact helpless if confronted by a photograph. We feel what the subject makes us feel and if there is a human in it, we empathize. We feel the pain of the loss, the sorrow of the emptiness, the thrill of the win and the exhilaration of looking beautiful. Just in one look, one tear, one smile. We instantly connect to people miles away, on different lands and in different times. We don't need to know who they are, their name or their history. Their eyes tell us the whole story.
The true power of photography lies in capturing these moments of intense humanity that transcends any cultural barriers we might have built between them and us and to reveal what makes us human, so desperately human. It is, in its unrivaled ability to convey raw emotion that photography becomes truly powerful and only truly then becomes more potent than a thousand words.

Paul Melcher