Gazing in His Place

This photograph, with all its simplicity, brings me back to the essence of photography — to the window, to the photographer’s eye, which is now my view. To my toes, frozen in my shoes; to the black shadow of a cloud sweeping across the slope — or perhaps it has already swept by, like me. To the hat and the slack rope that now rest quietly for a moment on the snow. Like him. His traces in this familiar space, and his presence through these objects — or through the photograph itself. I’ve seen this landscape many times, and yet I haven’t truly seen it except in photographs. But him — I see only in that tilted hat on the walking stick, in the fixed backpack and the dangling rope. And in my imagination, I see his footprints in the snow — that he has walked ahead to leave behind a trace of himself in the landscape. And with that, I believe that everything I see has, at some point, passed through his eyes. I don’t really know him but now through mediation and a touch of leniency, I’ve taken the place of his eyes. I know I’ve never been there before. I don’t know whether I belong to this place or not but in this photograph this place is my refuge. And upon this vast land, upon this  white-peak mountain, I am in love.