Chasing my light

This week while leaving the bookstore I passed a table and a cover caught my eye. It was Jim Brandenburg's Looking for the Summer, a photo essay of nature and landscape photos. I am not really a nature or a landscape photographer, nor am I particularly outdoorsy. However, Jim and I go way back, way into my Dark Ages before I knew who I was, what I was doing, or even considered picking up a camera. I do not mean that I know him in any way, shape or form but he was a name introduced to me by someone who was (is) very important to me who coveted his wolf photographs. In those days I looked through his first book, running my fingers over the thick, glossy pages that were windows into a land I never thought I would ever see for myself. The images of the northern wilderness were so beautiful and touching they took my breath away. Coming from a bland suburb of a suburb and living in a dorm in college, I never was exposed to such peace and perfection. While life was chaos and a storm of confused and negative emotions for me, the visions of grey wolf pelts half-hidden in the heavy snowfall, misunderstood and uncaring, always stayed with me.

Even more so was that one photo of a freshly killed doe in the snow, her endless deep black eyes starting to frost over with a delicate tracery of ice.

After a decade I finally saw Jim's work again. And I thought to myself "Kismet happens." It's astonishing, actually. I bought the book without a second thought and only opened it after I got home. Have you ever read that short story about the woman who searches and searches for a beautiful blue bracelet she had as a child, only to find it and realize it was just a piece of plastic? I hate to admit I sort of felt like that. Not that Jim's work isn't a landmark in its genre and that he produces stunning images, but most of the magic I used to feel was gone. Perhaps it was the advent of digital technology, the fact that I am no longer lost, or the recent passing of knowledge from one great (touchable) landscape photographer to myself... but I was a little bit let down. I understand that this is part of life - you live, you learn, you create your own art. And when you educate yourself the romanticism of much is ripped away.

Ignorance is bliss!

I will continue to chase great photographs because they are the diversion that keeps me sane. And perhaps when I get the chance I'll look up that deer photo that moved me so much the day I first saw it.

Then again, maybe it's just better to keep it a memory.