Photo by Eline Seward

I was always the friend with a camera.  

I also have a freakishly good memory for details about events that happened years ago. This memory is not useful for taking books back to the library on time but I can tell you what colour my bicycle was when I was eight.

Purple (I’m sure you were wondering).

I have always been absorbed by the ideas of time and memory.

I am the friend who remembers details: 

• who wore what to the dance thirty years ago

• the kind of ice cream we all ate the summer everyone got their ears pierced

• where I put my keys - nope, not that

Here’s the thing though, memories change every time we remember. The memory itself shifts ever so slightly. I wish I could say I learned that from reading Dr. Oliver Sacks when in fact I learned it from Inside Out.

(the Pixar movie) 

It’s true though, memory is not fixed. 

Photographs are not memories but an image worth keeping is a trace of what we experienced and felt.

A poem is not a memory but it is a resonance of something experienced and felt. 

A documentary photo that does its job is not merely a record, it is a feeling.

That family member who hates getting their photo taken? 

Tell them… we just hang out (because that’s true)

Tell them… there is no posing (unless you want portraits and even then it’s pretty chill)

Tell them … I work to create images that are not cheesy but instead represent this time and place, right now. 

This Is Your Beautiful… Now