Same Place

Jane Edberg copyright 2002

I have learned, as a photographer, to break down landscapes into ten types. Just like the zone system, which expresses ten values from black to white. However, upon closer perusal, there are millions of values, as there are millions of landscapes. I have studied thousands of them. Each has its own distinct feel and experience. Now, they all share the same thing. Nanda is in none of them.

In fact, all landscapes have become one huge place. My collective landscape remains a place he'll never be. Odd, to wake up to a world that no longer contains a person you knew and loved. My grief can shape any place as empty or dangerous. I can paint any landscape as painful and deceptive, each pigment embedded with his being gone. Unbelievably, he is no longer anywhere.

Ashes, that which was left of his body, I had stored in a porcelain box. They sat on a table, in the middle of our house, for a year. Because he was nowhere, I wanted him to be everywhere, so I let his ashes go loose into the ocean. I imagined that great moving body of water touching all the edges of the earth, Nanda's ashes resting up on all shores, drifting up rivers and tributaries. I envisioned them evaporating into the atmosphere, powdering the hills and mountains, and resting at the top of Mount Everest, McKinley, Illimani or perhaps Nanda Devi in Nepal.

I began to examine the places that Nanda loved. Places we had spent time together. I photographed him in my backyard, two months before he died. A long year went by, and I found myself looking back there where he stood for those portraits. Things had changed. The tree swing had been cut down, the robust, magenta Bougainvillea had frozen up and died, and the ivy had overgrown the entire fence taking the honeysuckle with it. The old ladder was gone. The bucket, the hose and the garden hoe, all had been moved. Broken stepping-stones had been replaced with new ones. I was profoundly surprised to find these simple changes, to see that no place is ever the same from one moment to the next, and through time and events, places could become unrecognizable. I promptly placed myself into those scenes as observer and witness. Loss changes as life changes, continually evolving. In turn, I began to feel myself moving, no longer frozen.