bearing witness (the lost and found)

On a good afternoon, a camera is loaded with film and the streets offer the catch of the day. A crooked ladder glowing in an alleyway. Two men on a roof, discussing something important. A stretch of road ripped up and then glazed over with fresh asphalt, leaving giant patches of the old pavement untouched, oddly like a naked lover - sunburned in some places, secretly pale in others.

But those afternoons are scarce, when you need to make a living. The wheel turns, the bills get paid, and suddenly you are older. You have not given up on those plans for your masterpiece, or even the most minor work that holds water. You are reduced to grabbing at the straws and the minutes, keeping that light in the window, holding tight to the wide open promise you felt in school, the lavish waste of youth, the adventures taken without hesitation, riding shotgun on mayhem, coming up for air at the last minute always on the edge of drowning in possibilities and now somehow here with wrinkles around your eyes.

I have started to find a way to avoid conversations with myself about success. I see it as a modern invention to stifle creativity. This obsession with measuring and comparing, of turning the creative act into a failure if it falls on too few ears, and a glory if millions like it is a losing battle, one that cannot be won. When we are dead, none of this perceived success will mean very much. But, if you were to find a box of photos left behind by some stranger while cleaning out a basement, without any knowledge of who they are, and who is in them, you might feel as curious as Alice. And what are these photos but a person bearing witness? And is bearing witness enough? I have started to think it is. We have been brainwashed into thinking an artist is famous, and recognized when their books are on shelves, their paintings in museums, their films carefully sitting in cans preserved for generations. What if we were to simply say that an artist sees the world, or creates a world to witness, and these odd documents they create are of use, of value to anyone and everyone that stumbles across them somewhere down the road. They are not tickets for the fame lottery, but humble observations.

Is there anything as sad and beautiful as a lost and found box? Who can resist thumbing through it, creating their own private narrative about one little red mitten, and who lost it one winter day? The book left behind, with dog-eared pages, with some stranger’s thoughts scribbled in the margins. The umbrellas and eyeglasses, every lonely installation in that cardboard box museum - they are all perfect little stories waiting to be completed by the people that find them.

all photos by the author