Memento Mori: a reminder of mortality…
Witnessing Life
Save for the photographs I make for Scooter in the Sticks and a few family snapshots I’ve been an idle photographer. The darkroom is shuttered and I’ve sold almost all of my “serious” cameras — the Leica is gone along with the view camera. And with them my desire to seriously pursue any more photography projects. Finally free of the torment of camera work and creative irritations I could relax and enjoy each day as it unfolded. At least until I found myself picking the camera up each morning as I wandered the garden with the dogs. Without intention or goal I pressure the shutter on whatever provided interest. Or not. I was engaging a photographic process that I knew, at least subconsciously, would stimulate desire.
A desire to see again.
Learning to See
I can’t remember when the camera became a means to see beyond what was revealed to my eyes. There is more — sometimes wonderful images reflecting the soaring joy felt felt witnessing a magnificent vista, the grin on a granddaughter’s face, or the loving eyes of a faithful dog. Make enough photographs and you may find something else, something not everyone is comfortable looking at — the march of time.
Writer, filmmaker, teacher and activist Susan Sontag eloquently described a part of the photographic phenomena.
“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”
― Susan Sontag
Wandering the garden with the camera I’m stricken by what is passing away.
Stride with Grace
My lovely bamboo grove — planted 20 years ago and growing into a dazzling array of culms and shimmering leaves. Such a graceful plant (though wildly aggressive lest one wield a shovel continuously). And then, seemingly overnight, it passes its peak and begins to fade. The camera sees it. There is less life ahead. The Phyllostachys aureosulcata surrenders to time’s relentless melt. Evidence is everywhere. In the garden, along the road.
In the mirror.
Dear Friend Junior
There are dogs and then there is something more — canines of myth with mystical power to influence behavior. Junior, our Belgian Sheepdog, has wandered with me for almost seven years now and submitted to frequent encounters with the camera. Photography can make some knowledge almost too much to bear. But it also reminds of what is happening constantly.
A dog’s stare — a quiet mesmerization whispering, “pickup that ball”.
A Photography Project
Fine hairs on a Staghorn Sumac branch as the dawn comes to the garden. I work with the camera each morning. Sometimes for only a moment, a nod toward compulsion that I can check off a commitment to work. Kim loves this tree and her enthusiasm has rubbed off on me. I’m slow to change in almost everything, including trees.
After a few weeks of making exposures with the camera in the garden I can sense a simmering desire to do something more — a photography project that stares at the memento mori. Friends have suggested my heart attack last spring has influenced an outlook toward mortality but I know I’ve been photographing that feeling for years, long before the heart attack.
I’m uncertain where the photography will lead but I’ll share evidence here as it surfaces and provides a glimpse of time’s relentless melt…
I will be waiting for the pictures that come from that project.
Me too!
Hi Steve,
Pictures do speak a million words.
Junior is a wonderful dog….you can see the love in his eyes and a eager desire to prompt you to throw the ball!
Good to check-in!
Kind regards
Len
Good to hear from across the pond Len. Junior is curled up in a ball — sad I’m off to work.
Many thanks for again sharing your thoughts and talents. I so love the photo of your companion, as one may see in Junior’s eyes the wonderful existence of living life in only one moment at a time. And the appreciation of that gift.
As ’tis the season of the taxman where we tally -up the previous year’s earning and , with a wince or smile provide economically our obligation to civilization , it is easy to then waste a day in an attempt to plan/control/worry as to our future. In the middle of a quiet moment I recalled your phrase “comfort with ambiguity” and was able to let it go, and return to my attempt at living in the present moment. And laugh heartily at myself.
‘My best to you and yours
While we’re not dogs it does make me wonder if they don’t (at least some of them) model a wonderful way to engage life by just taking things as they come and expecting little more than comfort, food, fun and care. Sometimes it can seem all of those are out of reach. Then I reach for the keys to the Vespa…
Taxes — I forgot about those. Time to fire up TurboTax again.
And thanks for your kind words and comments. It’s good to be reminded of things that I can easily neglect.
“Time’s relentless melt.” I love that phrase. Great post. I’m looking forward to your new photographic adventure.
Time is a scary thing depending where my head is. But right now the world looks great. Where’s my camera?
I found the switch to digital emensely freeing. I had gotten to the point with film that unless I was being paid, I didn’t shoot any more. There was just no enjoyment in the work that went into selecting. storing, using and processing film. It had gotten to be drugery for me. I know some people find cathartic, but not me. When I picked up a DSLR, the joy of just making pictures came back. I didn’t have to judge the time and cost of developing over the value of the shot anymore. I could just hit the shutter and delete what didn’t work.
Professionally, the switch to digital was wonderful. So much easier to work and experiment and leave a job knowing I had the pictures. Personally, I shot film for a long time after that. In part because of the process and how it affected my thinking, and in part because I loved the look and feel of gelatin silver prints. But when I lost focus on any kind of project the cameras laid idle.
And now I see myself edging back toward a film project. Exposed a few frames of HP5 this morning…
Wow, no view camera or Leica. Does that translate to digital only?
Yes, no view camera or Leica. But I have a pinhole camera, an old Speed Graphic, and a Hasselblad kicking around. So I’m not completely disconnected. Digital has taken over much of what I do now though. And with a big Epson printer I have what I need to be dangerous!
Junior looks like he’s saying to you: “OK, I’ve brought you the ball…..what are you waiting on?”
That’s exactly what he’s saying Dom. He says it often too.
Morning’ Steve,
Thanks for including Junior. I’m going to share this edition of “Sticks” with a neighbor who lost his beloved paw pal this week. Though now pushing 80, and facing the mortality issue himself, he still goes for daily walks…clutching photos of his departed Toby.
Stay well my friend,
BJ
Always sad when someone loses a dog. I hope your friend finds some solace in the pictures of Junior. I hope when I’m 80 I can still manage life with a dog. And a ride on a scooter…
As I recall you’re down to a Canon F16 or similar?
Cleaning house of photo gear, any photo gear actually is perhaps a good thing.
Been there, done that. My own problem is digital has not replaced the nagging feeling
that the whole process is redundant. Digital images don’t really exist until printed, sadly. Any more than images recorded on film don’t appear until the film has been chemically altered. Mind the film you can physically feel, not so digital.
And the same applies to photographs of our pets. You may have a photo of Junior (who I seem to recall joined your household after his first birthday)however that is a poor substitute for the real thing. Would guess Junior is yours, Lily belongs to Kim.
The day I put down my rescue cat Sam at 18 years, last fall he gave me such a pleading look as t o”please relieve my pain” which I did lreluctantly ater in the afternoon.
Have had pets in the past, always cats and they too have now passed into the great beyond. When I transition shall see them all again.
Some days have thought maybe like you with your heart attack and me with my Lupus, cancer, Celulitus and now my Lupus has returned with a vengance that these
obstacles placed in our path are there to assist and guide us as we move down that path
known as life.
You’re living i a somewhat warmer more temperate climate than I do hence your Bamboo grows well. Have a friend dwelling in the Niagara Peninsula here in Ontario
who has a huge bamboo tree in the middle of his back field. Well watered along with an equally ancient willow of some description. One occupies one side of the pond on the top of a rise, the other opposite. Two contrasts and yet very much the same. Both love moisture, both can overwhelm the area in which they dwell.
You have a Epson new ink-jet printer so you’ll still be doing a different
form of darkroom work.
Is the new printer viable for your current style of photography?
Interested parties are curious.
In digital I have a couple options including my go to workhorse camera for the blog — the Canon G15. I still have a few film cameras kicking around — an old 4×5 Speed Graphic, a Zero Image pinhole camera, and a Hasselblad. So I can still entertain film as the muse directs.
You’re right though — digital doesn’t have the same tangible quality of film. Not sure if that’s a problem or a perception but something exists.
Pet photos aren’t like the real beasts no matter how good the photograph. Even the memories they evoke aren’t the same. I’m hoping to see a lot of long lost pets again someday…
Sorry to hear that your health challenges have escalated. I hope you find some calm in that storm. I know there are lessons but I often am not interested. I can be a poor student of life.
I’ve not used the printer enough yet to know exactly where it will fit but I can say it makes remarkable prints. I just need a project to focus some activity around. I’ll share more as that journey unfolds.
Since my move last year, almost all my cameras have been idle as I’ve gotten myself sorted (together with Ann) in new, nicer digs. It’ll take awhile longer, as we’re moving back out for about a month as the house undergoes a three-month remodeling/extension. Since I have a preference for film over digital (but use both), this gets more frustrating, especially since my trusty little Nikon digicam has suffered a death by a thousand cuts (and drops, and splashes). I might just buy a bunch of Tri-X or HP-5, grab my little Contax Tvs and just wing it.
But…photographs mark the passing of the days, weeks and months like nothing else. My journals do a decent job at this too (so long as I keep them up), but written memory and images are quite different, where the latter is more starkly literal, regardless of what Winogrand (however correctly) posited that photographs cannot tell you anything beyond its literal depiction – no story, no narrative. I posit that our photographs will remember some things a hell of a lot better than we will, as time and age take their not-quite predictable toll on memory…which is why, ever since I started down the digital-darkroom path the better part of 20 years ago, that I’ve used Photoshop more as a transcription medium for my photographs than as a tool to spin stuff out of thin air. Those images of places, people, four-legged companions and events are a little too important to me to bother with “enhancement” beyond the usual fretting over contrast, exposure and, in the case of color images, tonal balance.
Here’s to an interesting Spring. And walking (and riding) between those raindrops.
I just ordered some HP5 from B&H Photo to do some winging with the Hasselblad. Actually made a few exposures in the rain this morning. I already sense the difference again between film and digital — the time that lapses between exposure and print. Who knows when I’ll get to the darkroom.
My photos and journals function much like you describe and serve a roll in memory that’s remarkable in it’s ability to redirect the mind to misplaced information.
I know the spring will be interesting and I’ll keep moving forward!
I have an unopened box of Ilford black and white you can have. Can’t seem to get rid of it, even at the university. I love photography as a medium of consumption, but never cared much for it’s creation being a student of sculpture. No hard feelings I hope. Although, sculptures do need to be photographed don’t they?
I’m glad to know, or maybe unnerved to realize, that thinking about time and what it means and everything that it affects, doesn’t go away through life. That probably sounds weird, but I resonate with your post. Sure, I’m still a kid, but I feel that sense of mortality everywhere. Sometimes I’m stuck with the thought for weeks – what’s the point? I wonder… Then you realize the point is the sunset. The point is the furry creature that hangs with you. The point is even in the passing so that beauty can be lived. I think though, that what it really means is that there is love. Lots of love everywhere.
When I was in grad school all the sculptors were shooting video. They messed up my ideas of sculpture involving chisels and marble. You keep the Ilford box — you never know…
Being sensitive to time is unique. I don’t think most people are — or they intentionally avoid the thoughts for fear of darkness or something unpleasant. Mortality isn’t a party but until I came to grips with it I was living as a ghost. Sounds as if you are much further along than I was.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. I appreciate them.
Great post Steve, and much to process.
I recently bought a blues album, a live concert recorded in Chicago with many blues players taking the stage. At one point towards the end, the MC notes the showing is drawing to a close. Someone in the audience shouts something inaudible. The MC says “why does it have to end? Because we’re human.”
And that’s why I love the blues.
… The ‘show’ was ending, not the ‘showing’… damn fat fingers.
Because we’re human…. that answers a lot of questions doesn’t it.