passing through
I once saw a man reach out of his sunroof to take a photograph from the pull out at Chimney Tops Overlook at the Smoky Mountain National Park. I don’t know if he put the car in park or if he just made sure to really mash the brakes tightly, but I remember being surprised that it didn’t seem to occur to him to get out of the car at all. I suppose this scene wouldn’t be all that surprising today; an era when most people at the Grand Canyon’s North Rim have their backs to the beautiful view or the longest duration of time viewers spend contemplating the faces on Mt. Rushmore occurs while they are waiting in the queue for the restrooms, and they are looking at the pop machine with a photo of the national monument on it. But this happened many years ago and I have been thinking about it since.
We inhabit so many spaces for such a short time. We are always passing through to something else. Some of us are doing this when we are living or working places. Some of us are doing this when we travel. Some of us are always doing this no matter where we are. In my past work, I have examined how one physically occupies space to be within it or stand apart from it. My interest is now in how the presence of people manifests as passing stories, small narratives, with minimal information. There’s little we see of others in the world in these spaces, but something was worth stopping and photographing. Something caught our eye long enough to linger.
