Ute Valley, 2 October 2008. I can be enthralled by the exotic, but I have an abiding affection for the familiar.Familiar places, familiar sounds, familiar people--they whisper that I should soon be on my journey home. Knowing them so well--like the smell of cooking bacon--I can tell what has changed: the moved furniture, the broken wheel on a bike, the wearing off of paint, the lines that have formed in a face.
Today was a return to the familiar with my brother Greg, who had traveled a thousand miles to be here. I, on the other hand, live less than a mile from where these pictures were taken. My dogs and I know the place well, as do friends who live nearby. But they do not know this particular place, the place I saw on this particular morning with my particular brother at this particular time with my particular eyes.
This place, the one captured in these and other images, is already gone. It was mine for a brief time, marked by the repeating sound of a camera's shutter release. A piece of it disappeared with each press of my finger.
Perhaps this is what I love most about the still camera.
It stops time.
