the following is a conceptual photo essay. using john berger’s seminal work on the philosophy of seeing, “ways of seeing now and then” interrogates our relationship to the past, asking us to consider what we choose to look at

Some odd months ago, an old friend drove up from New Orleans to visit me. She took one step in my room and retched at the site of the art hanging above my desk. I laughed. So few people who know me now knew me then.

Referencing my 2015 through 2019 self, my friends have lovingly referred to me as, “the artist formerly known as the problem.” This thing hanging above my desk was an emotionally loaded relic from my problem days. A gift from an ill advised whatever-that-was I once thought marked the end of my life. Dramatic then and dramatic now.

How funny that something can mean so much one moment and next-to-nothing another.  What had once represented my rock bottom was now just some construction paper sprawled across a beat-up frame.

For my new relics, the same can’t always be said.

“We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves,” says John Berger. 

My relationship with myself has always been about how other people looked at me. What do they think about when they look at me? What were they thinking when they thought I might want to look at this? Do they picture me looking at this thing for eternity? isn’t that the idea when we give someone something they’re supposed to look at?

John Berger writes, “The reciprocal nature of vision is more fundamental than that of spoken dialogue.”

I was gifted a reassurance. my friend was always close.

“To a friend’s house, the road is never long,”

But it doesn’t matter anymore.

We don’t see each other. all i see is the thing which made them think about me and me think about them.

so now I don’t look.

In 2019, I was convinced this person had ruined my life. I lost a job and quit another. Kansas City felt suffocating; I moved back in with my parents while I applied for jobs and self-isolated. Once I got back on my feet, I hung the collage up in my bedroom. I couldn’t tell you what possessed me to do such a thing. “To look is an act of choice,” writes John Berger. For whatever reason, this is what I was choosing to look at.

Even when it hurt, I always liked the way it looked.

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