When Janet had her first stroke in 86, life changed. I call such drastic changes in life, pivot points—points in life that are so life changing that life afterwards will never again be the same as life before—life past. In a matter of minutes, the life, the interests, the most important things that Janet and I had shared were no longer doable; bicycle touring, sailing, Janet’s photography business. The three most important things in Janet’s life, her photography, her music and sailing, were snatched from her forever. It was evident that we were going to have to reconstruct a new and very different existence.
I was simply so thankful that she was still a part of my life that losing the past was not that important. Since Janet and I have from the beginning done everything together, we began to look for something that we could still share and almost stumbled into family history research. We spent ten years hanging out at Clayton Library, courthouses and cemeteries. Since Janet could no longer do photography, I gave it up except for record photos of the cemeteries and courthouses we visited.
I am not surprised about stumbling into a new interest since most of my life has been one head over heels stumble after another, even marrying Janet was a stumble—I wouldn’t have it any other way. To plan a life would be so boring. My life has never been boring; weird maybe but never boring. I do know for sure that I could never have planned it this well. I often call it a charmed life because I do not feel worthy of accepting the reality that my life has been unbelievably and undeservedly blessed.
Over the years the containers have become extremely disorganized as I sorted through looking for specific items and as I tossed items back into the containers, usually the wrong containers. I decided not to interfere with that randomness but to celebrate it. I have been very careful not to do any aesthetic rearranging, not to remove the layers of dust but just to accept the contents of each drawer, box and container as is. The photographs are very impersonal, almost noncommittal, boring objects that are difficult to development any emotional attachment to but at the same time they are also extremely personal—more personal in some cases than I would like. They say a lot about me, about the life past, about life in general and how life is affected by pivotal years. In a way it is like inviting everyone you know, and some that you don’t know, to rummage through your underwear drawer and medicine cabinet—whether we admit it or not we really have the urge to do that, to dig into the most private personals of other people’s lives. Curiosity, morbid curiosity, I don’t know why we are fascinated with what is not readily shared by others but we are. Always wanting to know what is under the surface and why. My theory is that it makes us feel better about our own under-surface or maybe it is so simple as a need to find a commonality with others.
It has been so far an interesting project. I am planning a coffee table book of the photographs. I have decided to title it Forensic Evidence Found in the Containers of a Life Past.
I have only done the containers that were sitting on the workbench, the drawers of the workbench and the drawers of the roll around tool chest. I have a total of 27 pages put together for the book and seventeen 16x20 photographs laid out in case I should decided to use this for the Portfolio Challenge at the camera club. I haven’t even looked into the storage closet in the garage so I am sure that I am going to find probably that many more photographs.
For volume two I might do all the containers of photographic equipment that is stored in Janet’s old studio. A friend suggested that this was similar to photographing the contents of one’s wallet—that might be volume three and knowing me I would not be the least bit surprised if I ended up photographing the underwear drawer and the medicine cabinet.
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