Unphotographable is a catalog of pictures not taken by photographer Michael David Murphy. A photo album with no images, just thousands of words.

This is a picture I did not take of a bride, standing in the middle of Canal St. in New Orleans at midnight, lit-up by the headlights and honks of approaching cars, and the turning sirens atop a police cruiser, in which sat her groom, who was shown the back seat after being pulled over for revving his Pontiac at a stop-light, and then burning out to liven things up a bit on their way to the reception, but cops on Friday night don’t always have a sense of humor, and quickly pulled the couple over, so quickly the Pontiac ran-up the curb onto the sidewalk, and when the cops found a plastic bag of something in the front seat and threw the groom in the cruiser, his bride, standing in traffic, holding her bouquet (her dress an immaculate satin & shining in the police lights) had a look her in eye that said this whole marriage thing just might be going nowhere fast.

What I find most compelling about Murphy’s descriptions is how perfectly they recreate their intended moments. Like a slowly developing Polaroid picture, he reveals little bits of the scene at a time. Above, the camera focuses on the lonely bride, then the police cruiser, the groom, the Pontiac, and so on until finally stepping backward to capture the entire picture. Lacking any actual photographs, Murphy is still able to incite a vivid image of the scene.

Unphotographable is also one of those sites you find and instantly smile at, thinking “What a great idea!” I have a digital camera, and would barely call my picture-taking a hobby, but hardly a day goes by when I do not turn a corner and wish I had my camera on me to photograph what I see. So I can only imagine how it is for people whose passion it is to constantly artistically frame the world.

(How long do you think until someone creates a companion site featuring drawn versions of the unphotographs?)

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