I love how some books, days, people, experiences can seem to almost alter your DNA, seem to change you forever. Like they snuck in when you weren’t looking and scrambled things into a better working format. I love that sense of lightness that pops up when you’re growing and don’t know it yet.
In looking through my photographs from the past 3 years, I came across 6 distinct photos from 6 different moments that hit me to the core. From top, left to right: Visiting a bus a new friend was converting to a living space in the country outside San Francisco, watching the sunset on Cadillac Mountain in Maine, a loved one’s hospital gown before major surgery, a Swoon piece in San Francisco’s Mission District, visiting inquisitive lambs in upstate New York and peppers hanging on the street in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
I love how in looking back each one of those photos denotes a specific place and state of being where I was in the process of growing and learning something important, but had no idea of how much until months later. When I look at them through the eyes of Roland Barthes when he was writing Camera Lucida, their punctum leaves me reminded of their individual importance.
From the Camera Lucida entry on Wikipedia: The book develops the twin concepts of studium and punctum: studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph, punctum denoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it.
When you find old photographs or even look again at photos that have been on the fridge for years, do you really see where you’ve come since then? Can you pinpoint the studium and the punctum and be taken back to that very moment?
I love that there is magic in revisiting, relooking and remembering.