101 in 1001 {II}: 066 take a photo every day for a year [completed 08.05.10]
truth be told, i was carrying my camera with me at all times long before i started my year of photos last august; i've been trying to earn it since joe gave it to me two years ago. he's always been a thoughtful gift-giver, but that gift was on a different order of magnitude - both a testament to how well he knows me (my camera is small and sly, so i can have it with me everywhere and be ready to take a picture in seconds, but it's also lightning-fast and thrives in low light - which is, of course, the best light) and a vote of confidence, the activation energy i needed to jump in the street, interact with strangers, put my own pictures on the wall. a few months ago, i was at an industry event with jacques torres; he made a beeline for my camera case and plucked it from the table in front of me. "it's wonderful," he cried, "a chocolate camera!" not a bad way of putting it.
while i do think i've become a better photographer in the past year, taking this particular family of pictures wasn't about learning to see, nor was it about learning to present. though i've sat back and admired the photoset's growing array of thumbnails with smaugish satisfaction - treasure! - what i've wanted all along is an agate slice, or an ice core. this set includes the last photo of jude, and our last night at our local in hell's kitchen, and the keys to our apartment an hour after we began to own it, and david lynch, and bedhead, and wonderful and terrible food, and the first time steve and chuck fell asleep together, and me in a bikini in public, and mari at the bridal salon as she bought her wedding dress, and times square, and graveyards, and our home, our home, our home. i approached the very last picture with a seriousness normally reserved for writers ending epic network television shows, and i tried to talk joe into a version of american gothic with two cats instead of a pitchfork or maybe overalls - but i'm no good at staging. we are what we are.
{fin}
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