“Kate” A Walk into a New Year
Fourteen years ago today I took a photograph of my wife, Kate, as she walked the same path that had led to the title of my first book, “The Way Home”. Oddly, other than birthdays and holiday snap-shots, it was the first time I included a person in a photograph I published.
Ten or fifteen paces ahead, and unaware I was taking her picture, she maintained her usual brisk, deliberate gait, always seeming to know her heading, if not particularly concerned about the final destination. Earlier in the day gray clouds had descended into the dull opacity of the season, all but absorbing the landscape’s color. Worn black from deer passing, an earthy redolence of the forest floor was suspended in the air along the path as it meandered through the tall, close-quartered beech and white pines competing for sunlight. By late afternoon and the end of our walk the metaphoric veil of gray was lifting, light finding its way between the trees, revealing a clearing ahead.
From time to time I look at this photograph and wonder how an elemental image holds the capacity to evoke such emotion in me, or to communicate qualities of an individual or the relevance of a place it depicts. Moreover, it calls into question how much of our own experience and existence can be ascribed to or reflected in our art – a fundamental question for any work I suppose. An artist’s perception, of course, relies as much upon personal experience as on his/her powers of observation and attempts at objectivity.
What others may take, if anything, from this particular image is difficult to know. From the general lack of detail, a random viewer might see only the banal, an androgynous figure, an indistinct path and a locale sufficiently lacking in context to place. For me, however, the photograph captures Kate’s authenticity, humility, and reverence for the natural world, the same qualities I’ve valued in nature and that have illuminated my way home through difficult times. Presumptuous to think others might have similar notions about this photograph but one must ask, even rhetorically; is there not some universality in an image or any work of art, symbols perhaps that transcend the experience of the artist or viewer, that, in the end, confer meaning?
I send this image on as an expression of gratitude and love for Kate and as a symbol of mystery and goodwill to each of you as we embark on the new year.
Geoff
