How does one capture a feeling, of a creature, or a moment, or a time in one's life? Can that essence only be fleeting and known to the observer at that moment, or can this photo take me back to this exact second, years from now? Is that why take pictures?
Just as a perfume can transport me back into my family home of over 30 years ago, or the smell of dog fennel takes me to of our first days here at the farm, to a moment when I was walking in the pasture with my then-first horse, Emily Brown, so too I hope these pictures will transport me to this place I've conceived, Apifera.
And I have conceived it, for my own sanity. For a shelter from the rural county I often feel so much like a fish in, without water. It's really not my job to soothe anyone, or inspire anyone; it is certainly nice my photos,art and words do that for some people. I like that, it gives meaning to my art, for sure.
But it's not why I photograph, or document, or create. I don't do it for anyone. I think I'm just trying to hang onto moments I know are whirring by....so fast. Just as I look at photos of me as a child, or a young woman, some day I'll look at these pictures as an old woman. God, let me feel the sense of donkey ears, and cat tails brushing my leg, and hay as it's being cut in the distance, the sound of a horse on gravel, my husband's voice in the kitchen. I think that's why I create. To experience it in double time, to say, 'Hey, thanks, Gods, this moment was too good just to experience, I had to, well, I had to do something more to honor it, or capture it."
The Apifera Cats have dwindled over the years from 25 to a 12, and this weekend I thought we'd lost another, Bradshaw, but he came back after a 3 day Apifera hiatus. It me to thinking of this farm without cats, or years from now, when all the animals I know so well will be gone. If I'm still here, on this farm, will this picture bring back the delight in seeing BW in front of the yellow Santolina plant? I hope so.
Will I partake and feel the mystic in the blur of the globe thistle, or will I wonder why I took it, all blurry like that? Who knows.
