Time Regained

"I want to dream the dream of apples / to withdraw from the clamor of cemeteries."
— Federico García Lorca

Everything in the photographer’s eye flows with a naked and gentle simplicity. In this scene there is no boundary between the ordinary and the extraordinary; what exists is the experience of the appearance of things and moments in the landscape of the here and now. Such an encounter, in harmony with the detached look of the camera, celebrates the companionship of the beauty of the apples’ color and form, and the sublime presence of Mount Damavand — blurred, distant, unreachable, yet omnipresent.

The time of the photograph is not the time of myth, memory, or longing — it is the moment of pure experience, of impermanence, and of time lost; the moment of witnessing the fragile beauty of the taste of apples, the scent of leaves, the shapes of clouds, and the reflection of light and shadow. Indeed nothing we see reaches beyond itself — and it is as if the pause of the photograph has captured things destined for disappearance and ruin. Yet even so perhaps it is better to reclaim the time of Mount Damavand’s endless calm — along with the gentle wind and the endless waves of clouds that follow one another.