Noº 20/151: Here for a Little While
Collection: Parlour Tricks
I have no photographs of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
Sunrises, mostly. I couldn’t reconstruct them for you. I’ve forgotten the clouds, the colors, whatever was standing between me and the light. But I remember wanting more.
We photograph things just because. Something catches our eye and we want to take it home. I like that appetite. I’ve built my life around it: the possibility that something I see for a second might be worth looking at for years.
And still, there are those skies I kept nothing from.
You probably have one too. A sunrise you watched without photographing it. You could take someone to the spot. Stand them exactly where you stood. Tell them it was beautiful. And feel how little that gives them.
How can you lose the whole sky and still carry it around?
It’s a strange problem to have as a photographer. I can keep what something looks like. I’m less sure what to do with how badly I wanted it to last.
Here for a Little While took years to become this photograph. The model was originally part of a larger composition involving a couple. The couple broke up. I split the photograph. He was on his own now. I had to find somewhere to put him. I sketched. Kept coming back. I could picture it clearly enough. I just couldn’t find myself in it.
“In a Daydream” by Freddie Jones Band helped me find my way. There’s a feeling in that song I wanted: being so taken over by something that, briefly, you want nothing else. Except more time. That’s where it starts to hurt. You’re still enjoying it when you begin to miss it. The sunrise hasn’t finished and already you want it back.
So I gave it a body.
I let the figure carry its colors. Gave some to the fish. Left the sky in that blue-purple twilight before the sun appears. All that light, held there where I could look at it.
I’d been struggling with my Parlour Tricks collection, trying to invent places that didn’t begin in the real world. I kept wondering what they ought to look like. Then I looked at this person, these fish, this light, and felt something I recognized.
I think I’ve finally found what my subconscious looks like.
If this was worth your time, pass it on.
This work will become a book.
Photographs and field notes by James Miille
Words by Jona Montoya
