Re-reading Barthes’ Camera Lucida when both of them are ill seems like an act of masochism. Perhaps it is. But in a strange way, the book is comforting. The grief in it is all consuming and blanketing, an adobe shell while everything inside me is liquid and churning. The more I photograph them, the more I am aware of their mortality and what I might do in the inevitable loneliness of it.
I photograph these days mostly to combat my loneliness. A thing bought on by my continuing depression, a string of relationships unrequited and an inexplicable (perhaps not so inexplicable) abandonment of friends. I have found in the last few months a comfort in the sound of the shutter closing. A finality. A string of finalities. The significance of these finalities has begun to slowly dawn on me. I pointed this out to a friend a couple days ago, to which she replied, “Isn’t it obvious?”. Yes, to most. But for someone who is used to navigating with his heart, the dead end is same as the four-lane expressway.