Ah History...

"Behind every 'Once upon a time' there is always another. Have you ever tried standing between two mirrors? You should. You will see a great long line of shiny mirrors, each one smaller than the one before, stretching away into the distance, getting fainter and fainter, so that you never see the last. But even when you can't see them any more, the mirrors still go on. They are there, and you know it. " E.H. Gombrich, A Little History of the World

Finished this book last night.. I've always had a love of history, and in high-school I made a concerted effort to be good at it to please my father, who, once upon his own time, focused solely on it. While my photographs aren't about history in the broad sense, they could be described as a personal history; sure, why not? My father likes to say that he studied history, because he felt he was born in the middle of a movie, and had to figure out what the plot of the movie was at the beginning, the part he'd missed, so that he would know what to do next. His exact words are far more eloquent than my awkward paraphrasing, but I think whatever way its stated, the idea applies to why many of us take pictures: to try to freeze the past to better understand what might come next..

Wish I had a better portrait of my father to post here. New goal: portrait of father. This one will have to do for now.


As you can see, my father is no longer a scholar of history, but instead spends his days spelunking into icey caves.