The Photographer

I don't take pictures of smilin' kids

Or the happy things that other people did

My camera's made of old brass and dust

It develops shadows, and captures the rust

That gathers on memories, on love, and on loss

I don't paint the picture

I just show you the gloss on the pain underneath

I'm a Photographer of the Unseen

A developer of the in between

I trap the ghosts in a silver nitrate stream

And I hang 'em all up in my darkroom of dreams

With a click and a sigh, as the image appears

I'm a collector of whispers, a merchant of fears

Yeah, I'm the Photographer

Some men come here with a fire in their past

They need a bad memory they know cannot last

So I focus the lens 'til the smoke starts to curl

And I burn out the truth from a treacherous world

The negative fades in a chemical bath

Leavin' a man with a smoother new path

And a hole in his soul

I'm a Photographer of the Unseen

A developer of the in between

I trap the ghosts in a silver nitrate stream

And I hang 'em all up in my darkroom of dreams

With a click and a sigh, as the image appears

I'm a collector of whispers, a merchant of fears

Yeah, I'm the Photographer

This viewfinder looks both ways, you see

It's startin' to frighten even me

Cause the last face I captured, lost in a dream

She looked right at me through the celluloid gleam

And in the reflection, in her terrified eye

Was a man with a camera, and that man was I

Trapped in the frame

I'm a Photographer of the Unseen

A photo developer of the in between

I trap the ghosts in a silver nitrate stream

And I hang 'em all up in my darkroom of dreams

With a click and a sigh, as the image appears

I'm a collector of whispers, a merchant of fears

Yeah, I'm the Photographer

The safelight is fadin' now

My own negative's waitin' now

In the developer tray