I'll keep searching.
What I did find, though, was a treasure trove of images that have never been touched. By "touched," I mean "cooked." By "cooked," I mean processed. Photos don't come out of a camera, analog or digital, looking very good. They have to be worked. The reason most people's photos just die by and large is that they come straight from the camera. TikTok and Instagram have filters, so people like to apply them, and it improves the image a bit, but filters make images look pretty much the same. So, for me, there is a long process of tweaking an image before it is ready for consumption. I don't know this for a fact, but I may have taken a million pictures by now. I used to photograph everything all the time. I always had a camera. I have created some wonderful images from my trip to China, for instance, but yesterday I found many, many more that I just never got around to cooking. My heart leaped. Just about every folder I opened had some treasures I can go back and work with.
It made me joyous, but it also depressed me a bit. I used to photograph everything. Now I am virtually useless with a camera. I don't carry one for the most part any longer. I have the phone, of course. But exploring the world with my eyes is a dwindling ability.
Everyone knows I had a studio once. I've been going back through those files, too. So many things. But I closed up shop when I got a girlfriend. I hadn't had one for five years or so, and my time had been my own. It was quite something. But I thought it unfair to continue with that life if I was going to commit to a relationship. I tried to keep the studio for a little while, but it wasn't working, so I gave it up. My new girl, though, didn't like for me to take photographs. She would get mad at me for taking photos of her. She would have meltdowns when I was taking photos in the street. I spent less time at the computer cooking up the ones I had. Gradually over the years, I took fewer and fewer photographs and eventually, I lost my ability and my verve.
Going through the old photos, though, I realize now the tragedy of that. Those old photographs are pure gold. I cooked up a few old, untouched files yesterday and sent them around. There was the fellow who replaced me at the factory with his girlfriend who he eventually married. They were in their twenties and full of youth and beauty. I sent the photos around to our friends to a resounding "Whoa!" and "Wow!" "Those are great photographs," they said. I wrote back, "It is easy to work with youth and beauty," which is true, but the photographic eye truly made them, the result of looking at and making a million photographs.
"You do best what you do most," I have always said, and the proof seemed evident yesterday.
Sitting at the computer all the live-long day, though, was not good for me. When I looked up at the time, I was already late for visiting my mother. She gave me some cooked cabbage and ham she had just made, and that is when I realized I had nothing but coffee the entire day. No trip to the gym. . . nothing.
Back home, I wolfed the cabbage down, then made a Greek salad with tuna. And I was still hungry. Tzatziki and hummus came out. Then some ice cream.
When I went to bed, it was useless. I finally got up somewhere before five.
I will get out early this morning for a walk and then get to the gym far earlier than usual. That will leave me with a lot of day. "You should take your camera out with you," I think, but I am no longer comfortable carrying it so much. Oh. . . I can take it on a lonesome walk through neighborhoods and make pictures of houses and tables and trees, but in public? I just need to get over the old curse and belittlement. I remember vividly her tearing up old photographs from her youth and throwing them away. It seemed a sacrilege to me.
My last few years of memories will be things like this.
It is horrible, and I am embarrassed. I sometimes wonder if she has a new boy, and if they make photographs of their lives together. My old friends all love to see images I made of and with them long ago. But when I am with them now, I am unable to make pictures. When I met up with my New Old Friend who I had photographed obsessively, I took a camera but barely used it. There is an implant of a voice in my head now telling me there is something wrong with me, that I am fucked up.
Maybe I need a therapist!
No, what I need is a soothing voice and some positive reinforcement. I need someone who is on my side. I need. . . well, you know. . . . I'm an impractical man. I need romance and the steady touch of My Own True Love.
I'd probably better settle for therapy.
Oh. . . I found a treasure trove from the "A Few Days One Summer" project, too (link). I thought I had lost all the high resolution scans from that summer, but there they were sitting in a folder in a poorly marked file, and there were quite a few I had never worked on that are good. Those will be forthcoming, too.
But what I need more than anything is to figure out how to use a camera again. I have a million of them. I'm alone with no one to complain. The roads are open. There are places to go.
But I swear, if I had someone who loved me and what I did, some protection and support. . . I'd be back in the saddle again.
That reminds me of a koan my college roommate and I wrote in the car one day. We had a practice where one of us would say a first line and the other would say the second, then it was back to the first one to finish the third line.
Driving through the forest,
We see no trees.
The girls went home.
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