Seattle, Washington. Mid 2002.

But soon the scene broke apart and lost its perfection … I was unable to capture the moment that has passed, the perfect composition. I could return tomorrow at the same time if the sirocco continues to blow, and certainly people will continue to tumble around in the waves, the intensity of the light will be the same; but I know that this picture has been lost and I will never again feel that same emotion … It seems to me now that this process of writing has surpassed and enriched the immediate act of photographic transcription, and if that tomorrow I tried to rediscover the real image in order to photograph it, it would appear dull.

If I had photographed it at once, and if the picture had turned out “well” (that is, faithful to the memory of my emotion), it would have become mine. But the act of photographing it would have obliterated all memory of the emotion, for photography envelops things and causes forgetfulness, whereas writing, which it can only hinder, is a melancholy act, and the image would have been “returned” to me as a photograph, as an estranged object that would bear my name and that I could take credit for, but that would remain foreign to me (like a once familiar object to an amnesiac).

Excerpted from “The Perfect Image,” an essay in Ghost Image by Hervé Guibert. Sun and Moon Press, Los Angeles, 1996. Translated from the French by Robert Bononno.