La Macchina Fotografica

We encounter other souls all the time. I barely know myself while the complex world passes me by. It doesn’t stop me from wondering. Who are they? What is their story?

I notice it mostly when at the Sunday farmer’s market. It is said that ego separation is an illusion, that we are all connected in ways too profound to fathom. Yet, I walk in a bubble through the market, making assumptions about this person or that. Often, a person will remind me of someone else, another remote encounter from another time. The connection is made. My mind plays games, I make photographs.

Photography puts a frame around these impressions and puts them to a test. It turns the whole experience into flat abstraction. Suddenly the swirling activity is silenced. A kind of truth is found. Souls seem lost in their own world, peering through eyes from the capsules of their bodies. Everyone seems to be on a similar path. We all keep moving.

Do those people look at me and make their own assumptions? I wonder of whom I remind them. Do I look like someone’s father? Or son? Or lost brother? Occasionally, someone stares. Sometimes I stare at them and forget that I am doing so. It’s all a silly game, a game of making the connection—of searching for some kind of truth. Units with chattering minds, we make things up as we go.

My camera protects me. It makes it seem that my bubble is secure. I look, analyze, click the shutter. Then I go home and look to see what the crystal lens glass has revealed. The mystery is never solved.

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