Time’s A-wasting
A visit with my favorite uncle (Uncle Lester, age 96) brought home two things: how time passes increasingly faster as we age; and how, ultimately, we’re alone, save for our memories.
For many years I created pictures that tried to become sharper and sharper, to capture all the detail possible. To me, more information meant more meaning. Extravagant detail is delicious, of course, and I could lose myself in the truth it conveys.
We are desperate to value each moment by paying close attention. We love the idea that a camera freezes a scene. But the moment cannot be frozen—no matter how quick the snap, time is always passing through the exposure.
In this project, in each photograph, the current is encouraged to flow. I’m coming to learn how the essence—the emotion—reveals itself in the blur of time. In long exposures, a neighbor is recognizable a long way down the road by their gait; a loved one’s gesture can conjure the whole person; a landscape is infused with how it makes you feel.
Look, there is the world, streaming its way past the front of the lens. I decide when to open the shutter and close it. (And, you can see, even the machine pulses with the breath of the person holding it.) What truth is revealed?
In the print, each image edge is scoured away as a reminder that this was just a little dip into the stream of life, laid down on fragile paper in a wisp of ink.
Uncle Lester lives now in our memories, a very rich place.
