About six years ago I was invited to see someone's jerry-rigged darkroom here in Albuquerque. There was no ventilation, so the unfiltered smell of the developing chemicals hit me hard when I walked in the door. Before I realized what was happening there were tears running down my cheeks. My host seemed surprised and asked if I was okay. My response was something like, "I'm okay, I guess I didn't realize how much I miss being in a darkroom." He told me I was welcome in his anytime. I never took him up on it.
Eric's mom gave me an Annie Leibovitz book for Christmas. I've seen most of the images in a variety of contexts over the years. But something changes when you look at images on the glossed pages of a book in your own living room. Holding so much life and imagery and history in your own two hands connects you to it in a way that can't be attained from a magazine in a doctor's office, or a snip-it seen somewhere online. I've spent most of this Christmas Day so far looking through the pages of this book again and again; reading the interview with Leibovitz in the foreward of the book. She talks about her work with a voice very similar to how I remember my classmates and I sounding in college in Atlanta, GA during the late 90's.
Art books give me flashbacks. Flashbacks to days spent on the floor with big, gorgeous books in my college library. Days and nights where creativity took over and hours evaporated. Critique classes where conceptual conversations about art and life, and the blur in between, bounced around large rooms with endless windows. Flashbacks to the unknown hours that slipped past while rocking chemical trays in a massive stainless steel darkroom sink.
I want my past life to be tangible again. Tangible like this gorgeous book I've devoted my morning to. Perhaps this is my Christmas gift to myself this year? A revelation to reunite myself with the ghosts of my past.
