“She was beautifully out of place. Sometimes I believe she intended to be. Like the moon during the day.” -D.R
Which one was out of place? The 90 year old camera framing a strange, modern life? Or the struggling girl using a 90 year old lens to try and make sense of a world that was too loud, too bright, too fast, and too chaotic for her to navigate with ease? With the camera between herself and a world she was reticent to join, she was able to detach a bit, and see things more objectively. To look at least a little more cooly through her quiet green eyes. The ground glass somehow giving her permission to peer at the world around her, even to try out placing herself in the frame.
It felt a bit ironic, that the world she described as “too much,” also described her as “too much.” She felt everything too much, talked too much, thought too much, pondered too much. Even in moments of emptiness, the emptiness was overwhelmingly too much and utterly complete. When describing herself, she would say, “I am simply ‘too.’ ‘Too’ everything.” A square peg before a row of endless round holes.
She turned the camera slowly in her hands, reverently. Wondered about the magic contained within the simple metal box wrapped in leatherette. Marveled at how that bit of glass was able to separate her from the chaos around her. Distance her from her own fears, discomfort, overwhelm, even her own chaos. Together they could freeze time and temporarily stop, or at least blur, the spinning and the noise.
earlgreyandi 