The Familiar and the Strange

This light is filtered through redwood trees and Douglas Fir. So it is tree light. We hiked far to get to this light. I wasn’t looking for it, it was just there and when Guy turned his head I stuck the camera in his face and opened the shutter for a moment. He’s not as fierce as he appears in this photograph though. He’s really very sweet. But here he looks like some patriot, an engraving off some old paper scrip. This is one of my favorite portraits because his eyes just tell so many stories. I know some of them. But they beckon to tell more. I guess that’s what I’m after, both familiarity and mystery. I know this person, yet I don’t. Can anyone ever truly be known?

The answer is, I think, no. Because we can hardly know ourselves. It takes a lifetime for that. If you’re lucky. Sure, we can look in the mirror everyday and get a vague sense of our personal landscape. But there’s another mirror. One that cannot be accessed with eyes. It’s the heart, for lack of a better term. How often do we look at our hearts with our hearts? It’s not easy. So we have to be each other’s heart mirrors. And I think, maybe, that that’s what photography is for me.