15/06/2023
Today I woke up restless. I went to the farmer’s market and waited for time to pass until the scheduled photoshoot. I took the subway and, once I was out, it started raining. I cursed myself for not bringing an umbrella with me – my camera was in my bag, its electronics praying for their life. Thankfully, by the time I reached Chris the rain had stopped. It was a bit surreal, meeting the human responsible for the work I have been following for many months.
We started immediately. Music played, Chris’s camera was out and loaded, clothes were off with only my socks touching the dried grass outside. It felt weird to switch places and finally have someone photograph me. That was the cause of my unease all day. I am pretty sure my state was obvious because I was being annoying, stopping every other minute to ask how this hand should rest on my body or how high up (or maybe downwards, what do you say?) my eyes should point. Later, when we got inside for more photos, there was this moment when I lay upside down on the bed, looking at Chris getting the framing and focus right, and it hit me. I usually get this while watching portraits I have shot. It is a feeling of nostalgia, but mostly sadness. Maybe it is about how photographs capture a past moment never coming back and how we get to see it after we have changed and grown older. That feeling, also, has to do a lot with time and memory, two perplexing subjects associated with photography but also uncomfortable for me to really delve into. These past few months I have been complaining to similarly afflicted friends about how time moves too hastily recently and how I cannot adequately process experiences. Unfortunately, no matter how much I love photography, it has come to be intertwined with time lost and memories blurred, even though it shouldn’t be. A photograph is only a slither of a second – it does not represent reality, so why should it have such an effect on mine? A photograph captures only a microscopic fragment of a colossal tale and even that wee part is untrue to the tale. It is a testament of a memory but, at the same time, it is artificial and simulatory.
As I was lying upside down, posing for a second shot, it briefly came to my mind how, twenty or thirty years later, I will look at these shots (thankfully they will turn out good or I’ll never forgive myself for doing this) and feel sad about these moments because they will not feel distant to future-me but they will be. Like those old people saying they feel nineteen, yet they are nineteen trapped in eighty-four-year-old bodies. This is also where regret comes into play. Every time that feeling hits me, regret looms over and it’s always the same kind of regret: why do you keep taking photographs if you’re going to end up in despair over how life is so short and time so hasty? I don’t have an answer. However, I’m sure that that my ignoring the question will come back to bite me when I get older.
Cutting back to the photoshoot, eventually, it was time to land back on the bed and consciousness, the photographs were taken and soon enough it was time to go back home and study about fact vs fiction in the English Renaissance literature. On the way home, I was trying to shake off the regret and sadness by gaslighting myself into thinking that I will feel peaceful when I see these photographs, or any other photograph, five or twenty years later. I took a shower and started studying for the exam. The next poem in the syllabus reads “I am not I, pity the tale of me”.
