Incidental Realities

"The majority of correspondence that we receive on this topic," were the first words I heard when channel surfing recently, after moving to the United Kingdom. It was a voice from the States that had seemed to follow me here. Sally Jesse Raphael was summarizing the statistics of alienation. "Four of five people," she said, "suspect that they were adopted, displaced at birth, or ..." were otherwise apart from the family that claims them. I am one of those people.

When I was eighteen, I sent my parents a postcard from a long trip to France. "Home is where the heart is," I wrote, "and, I feel so at home here." My mother would tell me, not long after my return, that she feared I would not come back. She had been aware of my isolation. I was forever, effortlessly seeming to prove my differences from my siblings.

Long before that on warm summers' nights, my brothers would join my father on the front porch. An earphone connected them via their transistor radios to the Reds game, whether downtown or away. Being there was as mandatory as was tossing ball before the sun went down. My escape, then, came in the form of a shortwave radio. After initially listening in on a game I didn't understand, I tuned in at first to English Canadian and British broadcasts and, later, to Quebecois and French. I'd become a traveler, if the only thing that connected me to far off places were the clear skies that carried the signals.

Unlike travelers who make their way in planes, on trains and long-distance buses, I was becoming a solitary traveler. The voices I heard on the radio were the first signs of intelligent life a the universe beyond that in which I lived.

Later, as I began to travel in planes or by train, I found that I'd learned to hear the silences amid conversations. And, as I began carrying a camera with me, even in densely populated cities, I began to notices that I was seeing the spaces between the people. In those few instances where a photograph recorded the presence of another person, I was capturing them in their own solitary states where I felt I'd intruded or from behind, as though they'd already left the moment to me and me alone.

My own sense of reserve, if not of reservation, more recently leaves me traveling populated places with a camera that can be concealed. The resulting images, taken without the aid of view finder, aimlessly focused, usually behind me on subjects even I haven't seen, have begun to suggest a world of everyday introspections, seemingly separated within a common space. I've begun to look at them as "found" photographs, incidental realities.

DEPARTURE

 

Awaiting the departure of my plane from the Port-au-Prince airport. I'd been separated from the Haitian travellers and made to wait in the Diplomatic Lounge. There I placed my camera atop the bar and clicked away aimlessly. In the mirror, it seemed to reflect upon a conversation's pause, a still life with human subjects. It was one of those moments in which the camera seemed an intruder.

A VISION IN PORT-AU-PRINCE

I had come to Port-au-Prince, Haiti on work. It had been a fair walk back to my hotel from the National Archives. Evenings of boredom between work days was often spent photographing the hotel's ceiling fans. It had become a joke among my colleagues: "portrait of a ceiling fan, number 43". When I thought I'd prove that my aimless methods could capture something else, I was shocked to discover that the camera found the ceiling fan nonetheless.

RESTAURANT ARC EN CIEL -
THE RAINBOW ROOM

I set the camera on the table and pressed the button.  Though the open-air restaurant not far from the centre of Port-au-Prince was crowded, those of us eating there to disappear in the taking of the image, leaving only the resaurant workers to their tasks.

THREE WOMEN, TURNED

Most visitors to Aruba go to the beach. I sought out the isolation of the Alto Vista Chapel in the north-western desert. Finding that I wasn't alone in seeking solitude, I decided to allow the camera to photograph the view as I waited for the other tourists to leave. While I held the camera behind my back, taking images without intent, the camera found these three women making their own isolation, forming their own solitary contemplations.

THE BLACK AND THE WHITE

Once inside the Alta Vista Chapel (Aruba), I discovered that I was still not alone. Others were there, in prayer.  And, I felt it disrespectful of them to photograph. I hung the camera to my side, and allowed photographs of the space behind me. The floor seemed to describe the aspirations of my father's religion. The doors seemed both to reflect and belie those aspirations.

TROUGH

Again, I'd set out for another location on Aruba that I though would led itself to isolation. When I arrived the Donkey Sanctuary was a solitary place. But no sooner had I taken the cap off of my camera, a bus of tourists arrived. As I lowered my camera, finder still at the ready, the camera captured a world divided between natural forms and man made lines. The interjection of granny-smith-apple green seemed to suggest that the man made was forcing itself upon nature.

RESEARCHER

I had come to London with a visitor who was interested in seeing the mineral collections at the Museum of Natural History. I find myself bored inside museums, I'd rather look at the museum building itself. The building, more than its collections, express purpose. Here, my camera found the perfect sense of purpose within the building.

THE RED HAIRED WOMAN IN ORANGE LIGHT

She had been intently examining the Museum of Natural History collections when I first saw her. Yet, when my camera saw her, it was as she passed from one room to another, alone and in sympathetic light.

THE HUSBAND

A husband goes shopping with his wife. The idea of lingerie may even turn him on. But, once he in the store, he's bored out of his mind for wont of a living model. My camera finds that a husband who follows his wife to the museum may be equally bored. And, so still, he might be one of the camera's specimens.

THE RED LIGHT

Crossing a busy intersection, my camera seems to find the only people who cannot be seen, those closed away in their cars, stopped cold in their tracks.

WAITING

With a queue stretching out the door, it's hard to imagine being in a fast-food restaurant and finding oneself entirely alone. Actually, this is often where I find myself. In that sense, it was surprising to see that my camera had somehow managed to take a self-portrait.