Edging, GA doesn’t really exist, but when I’m there I feel acceptance of loneliness without hopelessness. I don’t know if “lonely” is how I feel or just fits best, or is sometimes it, or is part of it. I feel closer to the right word – to the person who will teach me the word, or the language that has the word. Maybe there is no word, and I’m getting closer to being a person who isn’t searching for it. Maybe that’s what I take pictures of – people and things that are also almost there, who are also almost done looking.
These photographs are of real people in an imagined place, or maybe imagined people in a real place – Edging, GA doesn’t really exist, but when I’m there I feel an acceptance of loneliness without hopelessness. I don’t know if “lonely†is actually the right word, or just a word I learned that seems to fit best. Maybe the people in my pictures are the ones who also don’t know what to call it, and also use “lonely†or some other inadequate descriptor to give it a name.
When I look at what I’ve photographed, the images show me the hope that is often so hard for me to find. But hope isn’t the word either, or at least it isn’t the whole thing. Without a word nothing has meaning, and I think I’m almost there – closer to figuring out what the word is for the feeling I and we have. Maybe that means closer to meeting the person who will teach me the word, or closer to the place where the language has the word I’m looking for.
Maybe, though, there is no word, and I’m getting closer to being a person who isn’t searching for it anymore. Maybe that’s what I take pictures of – people and things that are also almost there, who are almost done looking.