Time & Perspective Quote by Sam Abell

Abell is selling a quiet heresy in an era that treats images like trophies: the real power of photography isn’t control, it’s transfer. “Pleasure by simplicity” reads like a rebuttal to the fussy mythology of the medium - the idea that the photographer must be a technician, a magician, a brand. His verbs are almost aggressively plain: see, show, produce, hold. The drama is pushed out of the process and into the act of attention. What matters is not the gear or the spectacle but the discipline of noticing “something special” without strangling it with interpretation.

The subtext is a kind of ethical stance. “I show it to the camera” frames the camera as witness, not weapon. It’s not taking, capturing, hunting - the more possessive verbs photography culture loves. Abell positions the photographer as a conduit, someone who points rather than conquers. That choice matters coming from a documentary photographer associated with National Geographic, where the politics of looking (especially at other people’s lives) are always lurking.

Then he lands the real provocation: “The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.” Authorship dissolves at the point of viewing. The image is a time capsule, but its contents aren’t fully alive until they’re claimed by another mind. Abell is acknowledging what photographers hate to admit: meaning is co-authored by the audience. The “moment” doesn’t belong to the shooter, or even the subject, once it enters circulation. In a culture of endless reposts and context collapse, that final sentence feels less like romance than realism - and a gentle warning about what we release when we press the shutter.