The Loyalty of Going Back

One day at 23 I had an epiphany that professional photography was my future, and I steered my boat in that direction. A couple of weeks later, I got an internship that turned into a job as a professional photographer’s assistant. At the photography studio of the largest publishing company in Brazil, I was now making US$100 per month. Even for 1988 standards that was low, but I couldn’t care less; I was working 12-, 16-hour days loose and lost in a candy store of image-making. School it was, and I learned from various photographers and from fellow assistants.

Last Friday, 31 years after “photography school”, I had a strong taste of how life was then, how I was then, how taking pictures was then. I was not a professional doing my craft; I was lost in the unconditionality of play.

I had left Eugene, in Oregon, and was making my way toward Portland at a fast pace to get there early at night. I had chosen to ride on Highway 99 to avoid the fast-paced Interstate 5. The sun was low in the West and was backlighting everything left of me: the little towns, the farms, the animals and the hills in the distance. There were scents of pasture, of mildly acidic and musky wood, of mowed lawn, of cows, and more than once, whiffs of Tulsi tea, although I doubt that it was truly Tulsi tea. The single-lane highway was quiet and mainly straight. With earplugs on, I could still hear the muffled sound of the tires rubbing on the asphalt. 

I was here, now, enjoying my new Oregon, the progression of my physical displacement, when images started showing up. I had just passed a barn-like building and asked myself the eternal question: “Do I go back?” Having been a photography-addict who also hid behind the camera, for a few years now wanting to enjoy the experience above recording it for future consumption (but wanting to find a balance between the two), I always ask the question.

I don’t truly know who I am. While on this path of discovery, I follow the trailheads that have juice. Loyalty has juice. Honoring the strong desire to capture something that I saw has juice, so I turn around and surrender to my fascination with the barn-like building and photograph it from every angle. I gear up again, mount my computerized-on-wheels motorcycle and get back on the road, only to find, in the next block, a similarly fascinating scene. What looked like a 70’s rusted-gold-color Dodge stood atop a trailer, both framed by another barn-shaped structure, this time a residence. I had already passed it, but once more I turn around, and take the image. 

Since my twenties photography has mediated my relationship with reality. It has been both a profession and a hobby. Nonetheless, last Friday, something was different: I was back in a very passionate openness, in the un-jaded innocence of my early days. I was being hosed down with colors and shapes. No, I had not consumed substances of the mind-altering kind (my first Ketamine-treatment session wasn’t scheduled to start until two days later). Oregon, with its simplicity, was altering my mind.

It isn’t long until a herd of backlit sheep are shouting at my eyes. I, loyal to my directives, turn around a third time and pull over by the fence that separates me from the sheep. The sheep, loyal to their peace, flee the noise of my engine.

There is often that: the perfection of my universe versus the third reality created by its intersection with other universes. (Doesn’t that about explain the challenges of relationships?)

I smile as the image that I had turned around to capture crumbles away; in a comic, awkward manner, I recognize that I was left empty-handed, and that jars me out of the play state I had been in.

I am back as a separate, self-contained universe, the professional photographer who also takes pictures as a hobby, riding on Highway 99, making my way North to get to Portland early in the night.