[Leica] "the beautiful faces of dementia"

[hewthompson at mac.com (Hugh Thompson)]

George - beautifully said ...... stirs my melancholy ........

Hugh


On 5-May-10, at 12:59 AM, George Lottermoser wrote:

> Photographs console us in the face of death and oblivion - it's  
> their fundamental gift; they testify to what has been and what will  
> be no more, and this testimony matters. It matters because oblivion  
> is actually more than we can handle; because we get old and lose  
> faith in the quick and competent gods of our childhood; because,  
> unless we deny what our eyes see or turn ourselves into machinery,  
> the future of everything is full of loss and disappearing; because  
> we not only forget but we're also forgotten. Of course photographs  
> matter. They remind us of that important time before the future fell  
> upon us like a roof - when we were still handsome and lively, when  
> our parents loved each other, and said so, and our best friend,  
> wearing a foolish red bandanna, hadn't died. Nor is there anything  
> false or hollow about this testimony or the melancholy it evokes,  
> because all of it - within the great paradoxical realm of the  
> photograph - happens to be true. To be human is to remember. That's  
> why people standing on the lawn of their burning homes - their  
> children safe from harm - cry for their lost photographs.
> "Mulberry Street: The Story of a Photograph," Five Points

hewthompson at mac.com
Kabul, Afghanistan