“Thank god for photography. It probably saved my life.” -Bruce Gilden
Photography has been one of the few constant through lines in my chaotic life. At its most basic, it is the practice of describing how light interacts with surfaces. And through the interaction of light and surface we are gifted a beautiful record of the human condition and its place in the universe. But on a personal level, it’s the thing that connects me to you.
I laugh when I look at the photos. These are people, many of them my friends, with their best faces on at a time when we were finding ourselves. But behind the camera and lurking in the shadows of the images is pain.
Pain, the other constant: a near crippling anxiety that has dogged me for as long as I can remember. I’ve lived my whole life feeling like an alien dropped into an unknown world. Who are these creatures around me? I want to know more. I learned early that a little liquid courage could at least temporarily punch through that anxiety wall. But a little turned into a lot and I found myself leaping off anxiety cliffs with reckless abandon. I thought it was bravery but it took a war and two riots to teach me that it’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity.
If it weren’t for these photographs, I don’t know where I would be today. It was the photographs that brought me purpose and connection. They saved my life.
I’ve been sitting on these images from an August 2022 story for the Free Times about the closing of Columbia’s iconic Main Street dive The Whig for some time now. They were selected from a five year period between 2010 and 2015, my late 20s and early 30s. This was a period where I cut my teeth as a photographer, learning how to capture moments in challenging conditions. It was also a period of rather “enthusiastic” alcohol consumption combined with wildly unmanaged (and completely unknown to me) ADHD, depression, and anxiety.
The alcohol was always a mask, though. Liquid courage is false courage. It took me too long to realize that my camera was all I needed to get to you, to feel connected and full of purpose, to feel at peace with one’s self. Camera as fidget spinner.
These images are a desperate yearning to smash through the fourth wall and find connection in a lonely world. The people in them feel so close yet so far away. The universe is mostly empty and we are all we have hurtling alone through the void. Such scared and vulnerable creatures we are.
I think the photos are important, but they are triggering for me. They are a document of a time and place and the people who were there to experience it. The circumstances of their birth and publication were challenging. I’ve spent the past few years learning to live better and I think it’s made me a better storyteller.
I think it’s made me a better person.
But I don’t know what healthy or normal is supposed to feel like. Am I there? I don’t know if I am moving in the right direction. What I do know is that I don’t feel as sick as I did for so long. And I know my photos are getting better. I know I feel less conflict and more harmony with the world around me.
Thank god for that.
