Yesterday I came across the link below about a photographer who visited his dying mother at his childhood home in Canada to say good bye. On his way back to the airport, he noticed the beauty of little pieces of plastic caught on fences all along the roads. He eventually compiled a series, Snag, of astounding ephemeral beauty and wistfulness to mourn his mother’s loss. Rather than putting unexpected objects in familiar places (yesterday), these are familiar sights seen with a different framing.  Do yourself a favor and look at it for all the three minutes it takes, it’s worth it and will produce that moment of pause that we’re after this week.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2017/03/13/these-forgotten-shreds-of-plastic-helped-a-photographer-mourn-his-mom/?hpid=hp_no-name_photo-story-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.6789ac458b72

When my father died I was not yet photographing, that came some years later. If I had had a camera, I would have perhaps snagged the many little pieces of paper that I found when clearing out his home. He had left incredibly organized lists who to call, what to cancel, whom to inform, what went where, which banks and insurances to deal with, accounts listed etc.

I cannot begin to describe how helpful that was, particularly given that I had about ten days overseas to settle whatever was necessary and empty the apartment together with my sister. He had the most distinct, small, idiosyncratic hand-writing. And with every sigh of gratitude that these papers delivered they also produced tears at the thought that I would never see this writing again.

One small strip was on his nightstand where he had jotted down a Tolstoy quote, apparently important to him. I have never found the source of it, and I can only quote from hazy memory since I can’t find the paper scrap in the chaos of my own desk, but it went something like this: the only superior power I acknowledge is kindness.  (Really, that can’t be the true quote, since Tolstoy was so into religion…) in any case: the point is that kindness was something my Dad pursued and pursued successfully. He would have been 95 next week, a long 15 years without him.

Photographs of abandoned paper(s) I’ve found here and there.