CODY BOWIE

Minolta SRT 102

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Owosso, Michigan After I went to the County Fair I wrote a story about a couple who help a goat give birth and I think I want to go back to that again. August, 2016

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Tampa, Florida Last summer Taylor and I went to Florida to attend our Grandma's funeral. She was old, and she was unwell. She heard music that wasn't there and was stalked for weeks by Nipper, the nursing home cat who I'd been told laid with the residents who were close to death. But she also remembered the dairy farm near my house where we used to buy milk, my mother's delicious beets, our farm. My aunt asked her if she ever missed her husband Chuck, gone those 23 years, or her mother, gone for much longer. "No, not at all," Grandma said. "Isn't that sad?" June 2016 at the Plant Museum in Tampa, Florida.

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Madrid, Spain Sara liked all the parks in Villaviciosa. There was the big park, which had slides, swings, and a gravel path she would ride her bike down. The small park, where teenagers hung after school smoking cigarettes, was closer to home. There she would race bikes with me or Gonzalo, down the bumpy sidewalk and to the street, where we would coast down the hill toward home. Then there was the duck park, filled with geese and swan and ducks, some more exotic looking than others. Sometimes we’d walk into the small town where Alicia worked, say hello, and buy candy for us, and bread for the ducks. January 2016. Taken on my Grandfather's expired film.

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Owosso, Michigan I’ve been a lot of places the last few years and have a lot of pictures. Most of them are taken with my Minolta, and developed a lot of different ways; Walgreens, Indie Film Lab, a small photo shop in the suburbs of Madrid. I usually end up waiting weeks, and sometimes months, before developing my photos. I’m a writer, and when I write I always allow myself a cushion of space and time after a pivotal event before starting to fictionalize it. I view this delay in film development as an extension of this cushion, this time that’s necessary for reflection. I need space from things that pass before I can begin to process them. This photo was one of the first taken with my Minolta in December of 2015 by my sister. It’s me, driving her home from school a few weeks before I moved to Spain. I don’t remember what I was saying, but I know how I felt. I was in love, hopelessly and all-consumingly, and I was hoping for a phone call I wouldn’t receive before I left. I didn’t know that this would be the last scrap of Michigan winter I’d feel for the next two years.

In no particular order these are the pictures I’ve gathered from the last few years of my life, the places I’ve been, and my reflections today.

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