I had dinner with my oldest friend the other night. We met when we were 10 years old and wound up with desks next to each other when I started at his school. Our families became friends, and over the past 35 years, we’ve been pals. Somehow, he wound up living only a few miles away across the river, and it’s an incredible privilege to see him regularly, and get to know his daughters.
Last week, I got new glasses. The prescription is slightly stronger, as is the nature of these things. Eyesight rarely improves with age. But maybe vision does…
Anyway, I can never remember if I’m near-sighted or far-sighted. I’m the one that needs glasses to see things in the distance. But for reading, my eyes work fine. Until this new prescription, I could manage just fine, seeing far and close with my glasses on.
But at dinner, I grabbed the menu, then reached down, and slid my glasses to the top of my head to see the little letters better. Didn’t think anything of it.
But my friend said to me. “Wow, just like your dad. I’ve watched him do that ever since I’ve met him.”
I got pretty lucky in the Dad department. We don’t always see eye to eye (glasses on or not), but I know so much of the way I see the world is because of him. He always encouraged me to read, to think, to observe…even if I don’t have a fraction of his talent with a pen or a paintbrush, I’d like to think I got a little bit of his skill with a camera.
The first photo was taken on this Minolta SRT-101 that has been in our family since before I was born. The second photo is me not quite knowing how the thing works. The third is a shot I made while unpacking boxes after a move across the country to start a new job years ago.
Our lives have taken on some parallel, yet contrasting shapes. He started out to become a journalist, but became a pastor. I did the opposite. We both exchanged Africa for America, a few times, and still have a deep love for travel and exploring new places.
And that Minolta will probably outlive us both.
I’ve been thinking a lot about “ekphrasis” lately.
My friend @jeremydae introduced me to it a while back. I dabble in the world of poetry, while he is a solid citizen thereof. Ekphrastic poetry is typically about a work of art. But in the Greek, it means, literally, “to speak out.” To point out. To describe.
And what is photography if not an attempt at pointing out, at drawing attention to some detail, some thing, some moment. To say “Look at this!”
These three images are related. Years ago I saw an exhibition by @theduanemichals at the Morgan Library in New York. I loved how he wrote on the picture, brought in invisible information to the frame itself.
Maybe this will be a place to explore more of what is not seen in the images I’ve been privileged to make over the past 20 years or so…maybe it’ll be a place to point out, to say if my shirt was wet with sweat, or if the beer tasted good, or if there was a cockroach crawling along the edge of a barstool.
But because of the third image, I can’t help but see the first and the second together, in each other. And the unseen Jim Baum, who ran the radio station where the giant microphone stood, and who was the mayor of the town, and who spent all night while wildfires threatened his community helping give information and guidance to his neighbors, using the AM airwaves to share information about open roads and open shelters.
