King Mountain
Posted: July 29, 2009
Filed under: Portraits
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This is a photograph of another friend that I would not say has had a usual life, and so her story is not easily estimable; nevertheless, the elements in this photograph capture some of the places she’s been, but more of where she is now, and of where she is travelling in the future. Like the mountain air itself, in which only wind can be heard, that natural rhythm of energy as it circles the earth, she is a quiet person, simple, but in no way dull or shallow, the way wind is but moving air, and yet is so absolutely more complex behind what cannot be seen. She has been gracious enough to have given me a vision or two of the ethereal that dwells beneath the flesh, and I am grateful for it, and was thusly inspired to capture her in this photograph.
She was born in New Jersey, but, verily, she has been on the move since she can remember. She spent enough time in Arkansas to leave roots there, settling down pieces of her heart in memories of country friends and wilderness. Though it was one of the few places in which she’d spend any significant amount of time, her time their was, nevertheless, all too brief. She moved with her family to Canada, to Toronto first, and then outside of a small town called Cobourg, which is on the skirts of Toronto. Once again, She found wild places and new memories, and of the finite pieces of a mortal heart, she left another in those woods, on the shores of the lake behind her house, and with the people with whom she shared her time. The small subdivision nestled right against the Gatineau hills is reminiscent of her small-town heritage, and the simple people among whom she grew up and flourished despite constant transplanting.
But she is more than just some common country girl: she has climbed mountains in Korea, and of these are many of her most cherished and beloved memories. I hazard to say, I think that, on those mountains, in the jungles enclosing that temperate place of her dreams, she would have left all the rest of her heart there. I have absolutely no doubt that she’ll be back there, one day soon enough, sitting on another mountaintop watching another sunset. We all come back to that place that most feels like home. That place we return to when we need somewhere quiet to sit, calm ourselves and think. It can be anything, anywhere. For her, it is those mountains, and so I saw no better setting to take her portrait.
She has obstacles to face in the meanwhile common to aspiring young women. A university degree at the University of Ottawa in the Bio. Med. Faculty in not an easy prize to achieve, and requires full-time attention with only so much room for error, and that not a very generous amount. Again and again I’ve watched her stress over her grades while I attempt, and half the time fail, to quiet her. She can be as stubborn as the rock on which she sits, and perhaps it is the immutability of those jungle mountains that is part of what she finds of such irrepressible desire to return there. She has the new task of worrying about money, too, like all of us poor university kids. Out for ourselves, now, we learn what it was that our parents did for us all these years. We reflect on all the places we’ve yet come from, but more importantly ponder how it is we’re going to face the brunt of what is still yet to come. And, unfortunately for Her, she is of the type that will not readily reach out for a helping hand when it would do her most good, for she is used to being solitary in her struggles. She faces, with the rest of us, the very real truth that the successful achievement of our dreams and goals depends entirely on our ability to fulfill the requirements of each step along the way; and, like us all, she must gaze into the blazing ending of her childhood and try to remember how to get home once the darkness settles in.
A true, non-fictional portrait of a person captures at least something of the story of that person. The human mind makes many implicit associations when given any kind of sensory stimulus. By including various elements with the person into the portrait, you direct those associations into forming an unconscious history of who the person in the photograph is, where they’ve been, and/or where they are going. This particular photograph was taken spontaneously on a precipice on King Mountain while She and I were watching the sun setting into the west, listening to the groans of the cattle echo up the rock walls and pointing at lazy turkey vultures riding the thermals across the valley while songbirds found mischief for their curiosity in the thickets behind us. The elements in the photo speak of her story in whispers from all over the composition: from the streets and houses below, the bowing sunset on the horizon, the deep blue, the wide valley, the wind in her hair, the stone beneath her, the forest like thick moss all over the rock, her posture and her gaze into the ending of the light. Paying attention to detail is crucial in capturing the essence of a person in any non-fictional portraiture.
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