LAYING DOWN A MARKER

Michael Perkins

Dec 31

Overlooking Downtown Ventura, California, August 6, 2023

By MICHAEL PERKINS

MOST YEAR-END PHOTO COMPILATIONS TEND TO BE boasting boards, a parade of the pictures that show off technical mastery, a collection of "Oh, Wow" shots that act as a kind of resume builder for the makers. Moreover, many such lists are specifically pitched as contests, pitting one person's skill or eye against all comers. These reviews are fun, but, as year-end reflection sets in, I am tempted to sum up the outgoing year in terms of the pictures in which I was keenly and emotionally invested, rather than those where I "nailed it", leading me to compile a list of "most ofs" rather than "best ofs".

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Overlooking downtown Ventura, California, August 6, 2023

The shot seen here is not the kind of image that's instinctively in my wheelhouse, in that landscape work is not where I feel my strongest muse. I do it, and occasionally do it competently, but such pix are never the photographs that I feel say anything profound about me, or the things I care most deeply about. And yet, for 2023, I feel that this image has become more important than what it seems to be, i.e., a bird's-eye view of a small coastal town in California, because, with any luck, it's where I'll be moving soon.

That very fact elevates the picture, at least for me, to more than a nice scene. It now represents an aspiration, an ideal, and the first serious attempt I've made to re-boot my daily life in over twenty-five years. Of course, this is a very internal conversation I'm having with myself: to anyone discovering the picture without the backstory, it's merely a pleasant little photo of a pleasant little town. That is to say that I didn't say anything universally "wise" in making the shot. In fact, I'd be willing to stipulate that the other hundred or so daily visitors to this overlook on that particular day came away with almost the exact same shot, give or take a few factors. And yet, since photography is, for me, a journey, documenting where I have decided to let that journey take me is important. In the eyes of nearly everyone else, this picture will never rise above the level of "okay", but, looking back at the whole of 2023 and how it shaped me (and my work), it lays down a marker as a "most of". And with what's ahead of me in '24, I need all the North Stars I can get.