12 March 2018:
Like brightness buried by one’s sullen mood
—William Jay Smith, “Quail in Autumn”
Photography could be called the perfect art form because, well, it is what it is.
But—as with any art form—who’s to know what I’ll bring to the table as seer, observer: the man come from afar with a wagon-load of his own aches and jokes to view a nicely framed piece of time. I could bring my worst, you know, possibly my best, and place it beside a San Francisco beach. The tears from someone’s passing, the pain of some gravel-road goodbye, my memory of the morning bus stop, December, Virginia, 1998. I could bring anything, prop it in the right light beside the finest picture—say, a panoramic of the Mission Range. I could ease myself into the scene. Rest my life against the wall.
I am trying to say my history and heart is always in the mix. My own worried afternoon haunts any artist’s best efforts, buries the bright light of their eye with any place I have carried years.
Writing from Here 