pictorial reminiscences

i've been going through boxes of old photos. i have so many, mainly due to the late adolescence / early twenties photography phase, where anything and everything was incredibly fascinating and worth capturing on film and i was rarely seen without my SLR in hand (i think it needs a service; the last few rolls i took recently were all shockers and of course this has nothing to do with the photographer whatsoever).

if i had a decent digital camera you could bet i would have found fresh inspiration and my harddrive would be stuffed full of random pictures of doorways and back fences and slightly out of focus interesting people on the street. i think i may, however, have grown out of the cemetary phase...not sure, but i'm pretty certain (it's like when i rediscover my gothicky clothes in my old suitcases and try them on - i feel happy parading around the house in them but i think i'm beyond the age when i could convincingly carry off wearing them in public unless it was for a masquerade ball or similar. and yet i can't bear to throw them away...).

it's weird looking at fifteen years of your life in photos. there are some from earlier childhood, but they were mainly taken by other people. seeing the photos i took myself shoves me instantly back into other states of mind, other ways of being, other ways of thinking and i laugh when i remember some of those arrogant, naive opinions i once had (the arrogant and naive ones i have now will embarrass me in a few years too, don't worry). familiar faces crop up again and again, some incredibly familiar but without names in my memory. it elicits a little flicker of guilt but then i think those people probably don't remember me either, so we're even.