A university professor best articulated that an artist does not take a photograph, but makes a photograph.
Is that not how life should be lived? Let us create and not merely exist.
I am a traveler and a writer, but my photographs fill the gaps where I prefer my audience to hear only its own voice, when no words can render justice to the feelings created by an image, when a translation is both impossible and unnecessary.
As a toddler, I dreamed of visiting the Pyramids at Giza. Not only do I enjoy the prospects of visiting new lands, I find pleasure in the process of travels. Some of my fondest memories were with my Pop-Pop, watching airplanes. I pushed my baby doll, in its pink stroller, the short mile to Atlantic City Regional Airport, Pop-Pop alongside me, protecting his youngest grandchild from the passing traffic. We walked right up to the gate and watched the planes takeoff and land.
It seems appropriate, decades later, that I sold my car and moved to Egypt after university, where, on a rare clear day, I could see the Great Pyramid from my Zamalek rooftop. I currently work for a major U.S. airline and continue to travel frequently. Wherever I go, I make time to read, write, dance, and talk to strangers who quickly become friends. When I make a photograph, I simply frame a memory. Souvenir is the French verb for "to remember." I create my own souvenirs. Flight segments do not punctuate my travels. My travels live on in the realm of possibility, of showing you what I feel and asking you what could be.
Perhaps it was growing up in New Jersey and looking at the ocean, daily, that humbled me to recognize how small we are compared to the world. Despite our size, our footprints have the potential to be immense. But for the size of our footprints to transcend time, our strength must be fierce and it must come from within. Each photograph is my footprint. It is a step I take to bring a piece of this brilliant world into your home. It is my wish that even if the image fades, it may invoke in you a thought, an idea, a feeling that will live.
-Christine Hannon 2016
Is that not how life should be lived? Let us create and not merely exist.
I am a traveler and a writer, but my photographs fill the gaps where I prefer my audience to hear only its own voice, when no words can render justice to the feelings created by an image, when a translation is both impossible and unnecessary.
As a toddler, I dreamed of visiting the Pyramids at Giza. Not only do I enjoy the prospects of visiting new lands, I find pleasure in the process of travels. Some of my fondest memories were with my Pop-Pop, watching airplanes. I pushed my baby doll, in its pink stroller, the short mile to Atlantic City Regional Airport, Pop-Pop alongside me, protecting his youngest grandchild from the passing traffic. We walked right up to the gate and watched the planes takeoff and land.
It seems appropriate, decades later, that I sold my car and moved to Egypt after university, where, on a rare clear day, I could see the Great Pyramid from my Zamalek rooftop. I currently work for a major U.S. airline and continue to travel frequently. Wherever I go, I make time to read, write, dance, and talk to strangers who quickly become friends. When I make a photograph, I simply frame a memory. Souvenir is the French verb for "to remember." I create my own souvenirs. Flight segments do not punctuate my travels. My travels live on in the realm of possibility, of showing you what I feel and asking you what could be.
Perhaps it was growing up in New Jersey and looking at the ocean, daily, that humbled me to recognize how small we are compared to the world. Despite our size, our footprints have the potential to be immense. But for the size of our footprints to transcend time, our strength must be fierce and it must come from within. Each photograph is my footprint. It is a step I take to bring a piece of this brilliant world into your home. It is my wish that even if the image fades, it may invoke in you a thought, an idea, a feeling that will live.
-Christine Hannon 2016