Going back to Anantapur

Every once in a while, pictures from Anantapur go through my mind and transport me right there in an instant.

I remember the people, what my eyes would look for, how my mind would absorb people’s expressions… and how I tend to remember moments better when I try to take mental snapshots, rather than physical ones with a camera.

It compells me to think about how, sometimes, the purpose of a photograph shouldn’t overpower the importance of being present in that moment.

A photograph serves like a bridge, a sacred connection, between you and that moment in time. Today I’m thinking about that place and that trip to India in general. I forget how different life can be outside of the four walls in your bedroom and how, in real time, travelling serves as a kick-in-the-stomach reality check.

It holds up a mirror of how priviliged my life is, and yet how many problems we create ourselves, as well as how deeply rooted we are (me included) to believe that any sort of solution to our daily struggles come from a consumerist behavior but not loving connection.

Summer in Vienna

My friend Carlotta tooke me to the the river Alte Donau, which connects with the Blue Danube. She felt a need to instantly warn me that swimming in Vienna is not the same as Mallorca.

I couldn’t understand her tone because to me it felt almost enchanting. It was obivous that swimming in Mallorca was a different experience, but having lived there my whole life, I had felt gravitating towards new places that have nothing to do with my home.

This picture sums up the electrifying energy you could feel there. 

Maybe it’s obvious or maybe not, but the synergy of that place was almost designed perfectly to easily snap a picture. I felt somewhat guilty and a bit desperate to take it in that moment.

It doesn’t happen very often when using film, but when there’s moments like these where there is a constant rythm and a constant balanced chaos, you feel like it’s almost too good to let it go and not capture the moment.

It took no effort to take, and yet it would have made no difference to take the picture then or thirty minutes later.