your local nostalgia dealer

just tryin’ to make you feel some kind of way.

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nostalgia: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.

There is an undeniable beauty in image making. The ability for a photograph to manipulate our emotions and trigger a wave of memories is unique from other mediums. A viewer is given a frozen moment in time via a an original still image of which to ponder. A vivid imagination can turn this image into a feature film playing in our mind. This relationship can be further enhanced by the addition of sound, movement, and/or accompanying words.

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It was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit under that mid-day Southern sun and the air was stagnant and thick. The mechanical drone of air conditioners and box fans repeated block after block without praise. Locusts screeched in tune, and after sundown, they’d harmonize with the crickets. A rotation of vociferous canines would, one at a time, let out a cry or a howl - but only once or twice at most, as the formidable heat sucked the life out of most living things.

The only silence came just before dawn when God called his weary creatures to rest.

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Elliot and I always talked about bowling a game again like we used to do growing up. It was always, “Next time you’re out this way, we outta play!” We hadn’t seen each other since high school. We both went away to college with a couple thousand miles between us. Elliot and I agreed on loose plans and he was going to stay at my place for the weekend. We were supposed to catch up and laugh about the good old days; though we were both only 23. A few days prior to meeting up I learned that Elliot and his cousin were killed in a motorcycle crash the weekend before. Instead of reminiscing with my best friend at the plaza in the neon glow of the bowling alley I was speaking about him in a room full of people all wishing they had made good on their “Next time we outta…” plans.

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“This is where we broke down and where my mom raised us up.” He told her, in a melancholy way, as they walked back to his little blue house on the corner. The siding was faded and the shingles were peeling from the roof. She’d never seen a place so simple or quiet. In this loneliness was beauty. To this day she still thinks about the feelings she had that night. Those feelings come and go. Was it him or the place that left her longing to return for another quiet summertime walk at sunset?

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Our first snowfall of the season some years back.

This night I remember so well and it was the stillness that had struck me. By this time, folks were all tucked inside their homes and the sun had set for quite a while. The kids had gone inside and the shovelers had called it quits. The snow had stopped just before I went out to shoot and I found I had this winter wonderland all to myself. After about an hour or so of walking up and down the block I heard paws behind me crunching on the frozen sidewalk. I turned around to find this curious pup. I don’t know where he came from or for how long he had been following me. I find it amazing how he stood so completely still seemingly giving me permission to make what was a multiple second exposure. Following this shot, he galloped back to wherever it was he came from. And again, I was left alone to explore the stillness of the night.

I’ve been searching for this feeling ever since.

Donovan Woods makes me think of that night: