New York City - Williamsburg Bridge
I have started to refer to this time of year as the season of ubi sunt.
Many medieval latin poems start with the phrase: Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? which translates to: Where are those who were before us? More specifically, the phrase ubi sunt can be translated to mean: Where are they?
The ubi sunt motif is a powerful vehicle for nostalgic meditations on mortality and the ephemeral quality of existence. One of the most famous poems that utilizes the ubi sunt motif is “Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past” by the poet François Villon, which includes the line: “Where are the snows of yesteryear?”
It’s also used throughout several beautiful Anglo-Saxon poems like The Wanderer, a poem which I read and analyzed during a medieval literature course that had an enormous impact on my writing. A crude translation of the ubi sunt musings in that poem:
"Where is the horse gone? Where the rider? Where the giver of treasure?
Where are the seats at the feast? Where are the revels in the hall?
How that time has passed away,
grown dark under cover of night, as if it had never been.”
And so, when this time of year rolls around bringing with it longer hours of darkness that accompany bitterly cold nights, all of the doubts I have about my photography, writing, and my existence froth to the top of my thoughts in an endless series of ubi sunt motifs.
It’s the season of ubi sunt.
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I look at this photo and I remember standing on the Williamsburg Bridge with the brisk winter wind whipping past my face as my thoughts meandered into ubi sunt territory.
The afternoon sun had moved behind a cover of bone-grey clouds and my heart was heavy because I felt like I lost the light for the day. I had been meaning to photograph the winter sunlight against the bridge’s architecture. With my confidence shattered, I pondered putting my camera away.
As the shadows cradled the bridge’s architecture enveloping the steel structures in smokey tones two distant silhouettes came into view. And it was a moment that summed up absolutely every emotion I was feeling.
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It was during that dark winter when I took the photo in this post that I devoured all of Contacts, a collection of tiny vignettes that explore different photographer’s contact sheets and/or body of work while the photographers explain or talk about their work.
I think I watched the vignette of French photographer Sarah Moon’s work set to her stream-of-consciousness description of her own inward photographic journey over a dozen times when I first found it.
It’s perfect in so many ways and it resonates deeply during the season of ubi sunt. The quote that I hear in my head in Sarah Moon’s voice which follows all the doubting thoughts that play in rapid succession is this one:
“Time goes by. Light falls. I lose confidence. I don’t want to be a photographer anymore…
Then, all of a sudden, but not always, something changes, I can’t say why, maybe I’m just in the right place at the right time, or maybe I believe in it.
However, for a split second, I see a sparkle of beauty passing by, everything goes so quickly now within that stillness, and I’m carried away, and at last I like what I see, and I can’t stop finding it, then losing it, and all day long I keep on, because it once existed.”
And here is her entire segment:
It’s the season of transience.
It’s the season of ubi sunt.
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This is part of an excerpt from my New York City photography book which releases in stores everywhere in November, 2014. Info about the book (including where to order it):
NY Through The Lens: A New York Coffee Table Book
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Beautiful!