In contrast to “moving pictures”, every single photograph, even the most violent action shot, is a “still”. Nothing that happens in time and space − a change, a motion − can be photographed instantaneously without stripping it of its most outstanding quality : movement, the element of time . . . . No ordinary action shot can “reproduce” an action, because it reduces change and movement − the basis of all action − to a standstill, freezing it into immobility. . . . In photographing action, more than anywhere else in still photography, we must rely on “symbols” and on “translation”, if we are to capture the essence of that action in a “still”.

Feininger on Photography (1949)