https://www.flickr.com/photos/166266894@N05/albums/72157710789695136
More than once in the slow stroll through this community of images I have been approached by homeowners and their neighbors to ask, not with overt hostility but with clear apprehension, “Why are you photographing my house?” These moments could easily have given rise to my own defensiveness, my own diatribe about my first amendment right to photograph wherever I damn well please, but the truth is I’ve been asking myself that very question, over and over again, for months. I've come to take this question as an opening of a door rather than a circling of wagons. In return, I present the opportunity to join me in this ongoing conversation in my head, plumbing together the mystery of inspiration in the chill of alienation.
The first tickle of inspiration came to me disguised as the irresistible scent of fresh urine at the base of a telephone pole somewhere in the Arbor Lodge neighborhood in North Portland. Luckily, I had my trusty pup, Sadie, to recognize it and to make sure I lingered over it until I realized what she was trying to convey, that that moment in time and place was precious, but would only so speak for a short time. There was an easy beauty on the surface that gave shelter to its transience and fragility. Very soon, the flowers would lose their petals to make way for the next summer wave, when other flowers would take hold. The kid's bicycle would grow another layer of rust in its gears, another year of tangled vines among its spokes. Decorative trinkets would remain at their posts on the sills and railings or they would fall. The shadows would seem to pause but forms would slowly change, erasing some, stretching and deepening others. Some visits I would find things in perfect alignment for the making of an image; other visits would plead with me to return, perhaps at high noon or sunset, to see how the changed light or the passage of another year would create another image entirely. "It sounds like your talking about people," one fellow mused.
It sure does. The forces of nature, the effects of time and the passage of life, the tension between openness and vigilance, authenticity and facade, trust and fear, all are familiar to me, as I slouch, year after year, ever forward. I have come to embrace the Butoh dancer's search for beauty in the rubble of injury, exhaustion, decay. (I make no claims of whether one schooled in actual Butoh dance would recognize the claims I advance here. Most of my thoughts are scraps from here or there, stitched together after the fact.)
These images are culled from fall 2018 - fall 2019, curiously also covering the months of my first stay of any length in a nursing home. In the known world, age is defined as the distance from birth; in the nursing home world, age is quietly known by the nearness of death. As I review these images I remember and connect with them and they among themselves. Where I find homes of almost Germanic precision, I remember life as a curled body in a world of straight lines. Age slowly takes its toll and in the image as in my heart I find cast-off auto parts and forgotten toys. Seen from the end, life is a jumble of disparate objects, textures, shadows, broken lines and soothing curves, haphazardly thrust upon and against each other. Drift among boughs of light laden with the sweet fruit of sadness. But still, laugh or cry, make a sandwich and go for a walk. That part is up to you. Keep your eyes open. Life only lasts for a minute or two.
