Rural Church Mirrored

If you really want to know about a person, look at the things they make when they are making just for themselves. It is during these pure acts of creation that all of us are our truest selves. We create this way as children, which, of course, is not a revelation. Yet, we still allow these authentic forms of expression to be squashed with age. At some point our instincts move from curiosity to affirmation, and we begin to prejudge our ideas before ever allowing them into the world. We do this because we are afraid. Despite all public acclimations towards the virtue of strength, society’s actions - in contrast to its words - repeatedly undermine courage in lieu of acquiescence.

If our ideas, our making, our words . . . our living are not lock-step with the masses, we face an uphill climb that few are able to fully accomplish. So many fall short, confused, tired, defeated and wondering where, when, how, and why their flame of curiosity was extinguished.

Here is what I believe: we are put into these bodies on this planet for the purpose of expression and growth. Everything else - social hierarchies, economic boundaries, religion, politics - they are all forms of expression designed to do one thing - create structure so that our fears of the unknowable will be abated. But fear, like all emotion, will never go away. It is an innate part of human existence.

I have always enjoyed the act of making. For me, it is simply the physical expression of seeing, and seeing is the initial step for understanding. We are all in search of understanding, and we all express that pursuit differently.

There is no “right” way; there is only “your” way.

All future decisions and structures designed for communal harmony are doomed if they don’t start with the understanding that control will always be overthrown eventually. That is nature’s way.

This image reminds me that I’ve always been curious about dualities. It was made nearly fifteen years ago, when I was working primarily in a very literal documentary style. I fell in love with photography because I realized quickly that a camera was somehow a golden ticket to see beneath the surface of the world. I lacked the language articulate this in my youth. I realize now that it’s the contrasts of the world that have always seduced my curiosity.

Our world is made of opposites, and these opposites create a tension that in turn creates a net in which we all rest. None of us exist in stasis. We all move about various polars. There is no absolute. There is no forever. There is only the constant replication of the one still moment of now, which exists between the inevitability of what may be and the memory of what once was.

Freedom, right? All those words to say that we all want freedom but are taught to fear reaching for it.

I live in Alabama now. Maybe Ronnie Van Zant has filtered in more than I realize.