The impossibility of seeing through someone else’s eyes

We always see from a point outside of the bounded space of the photographer.  We occupy, by implication, the viewing position of the photographer, but clearly not the same social, temporal, professional point of view.  Our position is itself, as it were, haunted by this difference.  We cannot reclaim this originary point of view and can only speculate as to its character.  The photograph to some extent depends for its very existence on the figure and position of the photographer, as imaginary agent of its existence, but for us this must remain forever an imaginary position that we cannot occupy in the same way.  Looking at a photograph effects a temporal dislocation. We are required to take up the impossible position of seeing through someone else’s eyes.  (Peim, 2005, p.70).