recall

The past week has been tied up, half in memories and half in possibilities. I am sorting through old photos looking for things which might be worth getting printed to sell at R5's Punk Rock Flea Market. Frankly I have no idea what a punk flea would want to hang on their wall. No matter. I am revisiting the past year and a half... more so the last nine months since I got my Rebel XT. Maybe it is just the quality of the image files but they all seem fresher to me, unlike everything I took with my old camera that I feel like I have become completely detached from. It is also unsettling to see the change in the faces of the people I know so well. I had been talking to my friend Daniel this weekend about when and how we met initially. I have huge gaps in my memory that sadden me...pre-photo days. In my quest to procrastinate and be distracted by whatever I could get my hands on, I started chasing down original files to see what else I shot that day. Of course I didn't get too far with the real task.


dueling © Laura Kicey

The most beautiful thing I think is how the photo-adventures I've been on have totally changed for the better my feelings about the state I live in. Filling in a history I mostly chose to ignore. I remember moving to nyc not because I wanted to work there but because I thought Philly was a shithole and outside of that there was no scope beyond farmy podunkedness. Uh. Well, I could qualify those statements pretty easily with any number of photos I have taken... out of context... but I could also point out that the stories that got me to those points I would not trade for anything. And going back and looking at old photos, I feel there are some that deserve to see light that I thought were discards the day I took them... others that were giant oopses that said more about the mood of a day than the keepers, that no one will likely see again but me.

This weekend I returned to the house where I was robbed in October for the first time since the incident. With the trial and the face of our robber fresh in my mind, it was really hard. Especially as I park my car in front of their house and immediately a guy on a bike comes toward my car circles and around and parks it across the street from me, while I slowly get out and head for my friends' door, breathing shallowly. Standing on the steps looking down at where we stood. I had come to give fellow robbery victim, Kevin, a photoshop tutorial. I couldn't shake the awareness of where I was, even while me and the three guys ate freezy pops and joked about anger issues while Peter allowed himself to be drug around the floor clinging to Rob's ankles.

What am I getting at... they were all interconnected in my mind when I started writing and then I started with the sentimental babble.... Most of my friends I don't get to see on a daily basis... most live at least an hour drive away, more live a flight away. The exact details of their faces slide from my mind... even though they occasionally show up vividly in a dream or a photo is there to half-remind me. Things are missing. Smells, voices, mannerisms. And yet I get to keep the robbery, extra fresh to cherish. Hooray for justice.