What's Past: A Consideration

By professional training, I am an historian, and have been making my living as one for many years. But I have become increasingly aware that academic History (“James Buchanan was the worst American president. Discuss, providing examples”) and dramatized History (“Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings”) don’t really connect all that well to the “real” history that is surrounds us every day of our lives. History in this world is what we see on our way to work, on our weekends, on our vacations. It is a litany of what will survive, and what will not. There are the things and places we build to outlast us, and perhaps some will, but most do not. Behind all of that is the natural world, with its own timeline of permanence and decay. Rock, water, wind, and fire all work against each other, and against us. Yet these forces create the backdrops for our past, our present, and any possible future. These images are a selection from a larger series, with original verse, created over several years and many miles: England, Ireland, Scotland, Alaska, Hawaii, Nova Scotia, Maryland, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, and on a ship in the middle of the Pacific. Some are deliberately quotidian, but I hope that my choice of post-processing has served to force a re-examination of the everyday towards the universal.