Detritus (noun): waste or debris of any kind. Cf., discarded matter, refuse, litter, flotsam & jetsam, dross, chaff. Maybe sediment (noun): matter that settles to the bottom (usually of a liquid). Cf., dregs, lees, residue, alluvium. The difference, to me, is we can’t help but produce sediment. Just our being generates a trail of sediment everywhere we go. Detritus, however, is often a willful act of discarding, throwing off that which we no longer want. Cigarette butts are surely detritus.
I was asked to take photographs of the local area for a soon-to-be revamped community website (brynfordcivic.org). I wanted to do something different, something that captures the experiences of walking and living in the area, or at least how I see and experience living in the community. Here is some of what I see as I wander the streets and parks:
I am working on a long-term project to talk to the people who own and run local businesses, the people who make our community unique and real, and to photograph them at work. Rather than a set of portraits, I want to focus on their hands because they tell the story of their efforts. And I want to talk to the people, to listen to their experiences.
The last year has highlighted just how fragile our communities are, as we watch shops that have been around sometimes for years close and go away. I worry about what we are losing. So this project is very much one of preservation. An effort to record in words and images what we have before it’s gone.
In my mind I imagine a project that echoes the form of Dorothea Lange’s American Exodus. She paired photographs with words in a powerful way to capture the experiences of people heading west in the hopes of finding a better life. But I work more local. With people I know or want to know.
In the end I will produce a book that collects together these photographs and experiences, that joins words and images to tell a story about the community where I live. I will also produce photographs for each person/business, sometimes large format single photographs, sometimes collages or triptychs. They are free to do with those photographs whatever they want. It’s the least I can do for those who let me come sit and listen to them while they work.
Here is a small sample of some recent photographs, taken at a local bike shop while I listened to the owner talk about opening it and finding ways to keep it going over the past 14 or so months. I imagined them as a set of poster-sized prints for the shop.
It was a chilly afternoon, weak sunlight scarcely warming the few people sitting in the square or those walking their dogs. At the corner, two men stood across from each other engaged in a sometimes frenetic sometimes contemplative game of chess. In a flurry of moves their hands nearly collided as pawns, rooks, and bishops attacked and retreated. Then, like the kings they rarely moved, the two men stood still for minutes just surveying the board.
Whether moving pieces or considering the board, throughout the game the two talked constantly to, at, and near each other. A stream words tumbled from each man’s mouth. Now and then they responded to what the other had said, but most often they seemed to be sharing some internal monolog of strategy and tactics, of regrets for bad moves and compliments for good ones, of random thoughts that seemed to have nothing to do with anything.
When the game ended, they reset the board and started a new one, all the while talking without interruption. “We’ve done this a thousand times,” he seemed to say to me in answer the unspoken question in my head, “and he’s beat me most of them.”
Singular photographs are fragments, or perhaps illustrations waiting for a story to give them context. But series of photographs seem to prompt a different kind of reflection. Collect together enough individual fragments and arrange them in some order, and the begin to reveal something you can’t see when looking at just one. The photographer engages in a sort of Aristotelian project, seeking out as many discrete examples of something in its natural setting in order to discern the features and characteristics each shares. Or the ways that each interacts with, shapes and is shaped by, that natural environment. In this way, photography becomes a project of natural history.
The intentional and sustained effort to take a number of related photos and to assemble them into a meaningful series encourages reflection and a sort of tranquility. And, in the end, says as much about the object studied, e.g., windmills, as it says about the photographer. But then, that’s true of any natural history endeavor.
The last weekend of summer in Philadelphia offered the chance to look for contrast between light and dark. Nothing metaphorical or profound. Just shadows.
Looking for and at shadows invites a different way of seeing the city, a way that often requires looking down, looking for lines and patterns, for fragments of people going about their lives. The shoes and the streets tell us a lot about who the person is. Feet walking to work, work in the tourist industry, wear period shoes and extend beneath the hem of a historic skirt. They move efficiently across the street in a crosswalk, against the “Don’t Walk” sign.
Other feet don more comfortable, casual shoes, those worn by people who are themselves probably tourists. They stroll along cobblestoned side streets where no “Walk” sign discourages their progress. They have no destination in mind, no place to go.
But don’t always look down. Light and shadow play across buildings too, creating patterns and contrast with the late summer sky. Buildings that send forth dog-walking residents who look every bit as tidy and uncluttered as the buildings they’ve just exited.
There is a special aesthetic to religion in the South West. A starkness to the architecture and design, born perhaps from the struggle to survive in the harsh climate. Amazingly, some of the missions and churches have survived centuries. The San Xavier del Bac mission south of Tucson, for example. Founded in the late seventeenth century, the church dates from the late eighteenth. It’s hard to believe that the population in the area was sufficient to support the mission for the past two centuries. It is also a testament to the Franciscans who have continued to hold mass at the church and minister to the community for the past 225 years.
While some religious institutions continue to survive in the south west’s unforgiving climate, others struggle and contract. In Santa Fe the St. Francis Cathedral School represents the other end of the durability spectrum. Founded just 70 years ago in downtown Santa Fe, the, school closed about a decade ago. The school was repurposed as an arts school. But that too has closed. Now the property is for sale. Stay tuned for another otherwise unremarkable over-priced “boutique” hotel.
