New Years has come with fog. I am grateful for the softness. It has been a harrowing year, and the clouds’ descent onto the streets brings an ambiguity of shapes and a gentleness that is much needed. On my evening walk as dusk settled into the woods and gardens, I felt Wallace Stevens with me, looking at the blackbird differently. As a photographer I am not a purist. I relish the ability to quickly consider a scene “as it is” and “as it might be”, and to experiment with how mood shifts with simple additions and subtractions of color. I do not build my editioned prints using pre-set filters. But I find the on-the-fly technology in my pocket a miraculous tool both for sketching ideas and embracing the cinematic moment. The political and personal mayhem of the past year created an urgency of mood that has often called for transformation. The act of photographing offers the relief of distance, and also, paradoxically, intimacy, as the world shrinks to size of one’s hand.
Mary Geddry may have summarized 2025 best in her soliloquy last night:
“This past year asked far too much of all of us. It demanded attention without offering relief, resilience without rest, and clarity in a fog of bad faith. Yet here we are, still watching, still caring, still insisting that truth matters and that the future is something we participate in, not just endure. In itself, that is no small thing.” [Read more…]
