Two people gaze at a photograph--an open door to an empty room, a pair of shoes under the corner of an iron bedstead, a stack of mismatched dishes in the recesses of a kitchen hutch. One will see it as an object of arrested decomposition--or, as Henry David Thoreau expressed it, an impression marked by its own leaving. The other will see through it, an image directed or turned back on itself, a reflection of fading and washed out lives, but seen through a prism of time and light.
There is an old Russian proverb that says "you live [only] as long as you are remembered". I recently had a series of photos published by the Crystal River Photo Group in a pamphlet called "Collective Vision--Floral City". My still life photos are specifically tied to the Historic Duval-Metz House there, and they are meant to act as mediator between the subject and the viewer to express the idea of that which has been leaves behind a trace, in much the same way that an autobiography reflects upon the process of making meaning out of life.
This photo, called "Sunday Shoes" shows the end of an iron bedstead with a pair of dress shoes sitting neatly by the the slop bucket. Now, as the house is a continuously evolving living museum, this set up is meant to be merely representative, that is, I can't say for sure that anyone ever placed their best shoes right next to the slop bucket, but I do know that both could be found under the bed in that room of the house.
In the 1930s there were three generations of family living in the three rooms that made up the ground floor of the already historic home. There is the kitchen on the south end of the house, the center room which was used as a gathering room as well as the sleeping room for the elder generation, and the room on the north end where two generations lived and slept together. This particular bed is in the corner with a small desk and chair under a window immediately to the side. In the winters there was no heat except what came through the open door to the center room where the wood stove was. During those cooler months, the bed's occupant(s) would sleep head to corner, but in the warmer months sleeping head to foot allowed the night breeze coming from the open window to cool the body better.
The pictures in this series can stand alone, and they can even elicit a story individually. But together, in a grouping, they act as an entire autobiography. They tell us that "we should be able to find our way back again by the objects we dropped, like Hansel and Gretel in the forest, the objects reeling us back in time, undoing each loss, a road back from lost eyeglasses to lost toys and baby teeth. Instead, most of the objects from the secret constellations of our irrecoverable past, returning only in dreams where nothing but the dreamer is lost". (Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide of Getting Lost, p184)
And isn't that what an autobiography is, or at least should be--a means of finding our way home.
Collective Vision--Floral City is now on sale at the Floral City Heritage Museum. Contributing photographers, besides myself, include Natalya Donaldson, Charles Lightfoot and Nancy Phelps.
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