Photography is about memories

Today was a bit of an emotional day. I was asked to help Neil’s incredible wife and another of his friends in searching in his files and negatives for a series of work he did in 1999 entitled Portrait 2000, or P2K. He had spent a year photographing with a medium format film camera (Kodak sponsored the film) people from all over the Shreveport/Bossier area. He set up in a variety of places like the library and mall to create the images. Then he had an exhibit that hung of the images for just one day in January 2000 to honor the citizens of our area. The images were all black and white square portraits that he created to try to show the personality of each person.

While looking through his work, I was reminded of how many lives one person can effect. A powerful thing to think about! I kept coming back to it isn’t always the big things, but those little every day things. I spent five years working with Neil, seeing him every week, working together, creating art together, and getting to be not only business associates, but friends.

While it not seem like much, but this little camera seemed to represent to me that incredible time. It sat in the studio on the side with the lighting supplies, but it had been pulled out on a variety of occasions as a prop or for fun. To see it sitting in his print room brought back a ton of thoughts~but truly it was a reminder for me to enjoy life and to keep shooting.