Everything in Motion

To look at a photograph is to see something in its moment. Similar to the frame I see when looking out of my window. The landscape could be a painting on a wall, a backdrop in postcard colors inserted to set the scene for the human story. How often have I been oblivious to the life living in that composition?

Behind the window, the mountain looks inert to me, the trees stand motionless, as if they were not breathing. And yet I wake up one morning, and what's been just white or brown suddenly blooms into shades of green.

Nature is not waiting for permission to change.

Beyond the visible eye, it continuously grows, blossoms, flows, drifts, erodes, dies, and is reborn, absorbs, shares, shifts, adapts, protects, communicates. And never stops moving.

A dandelion finds its way through a mound of pebbles. In the moment my camera holds the image, it poses still. Inside, cells divide, absorb energy, and take in oxygen. The taproot anchors between the stones, feeling for nutritious soil, pushing the stem slowly through widening cracks.

What if the image that tells the story of stillness is really a story of movement?

A few months earlier, in Berlin, I bought a film camera before I really knew why. The shop was crammed with sideboards and display cases, like an antique store, except the furniture wasn't for sale. The cameras inside it were: Nikons, Leicas, Canons. The owner looked like both my former photography teachers, his face familiar as though there is a particular type of person drawn to explaining the art of photography.

I had my mind set on a Pentax 1000. My research named it the ideal camera for learning shutter speed, aperture, and focus, each frame set manually.

The store was small but busy. I waited semi-patiently while the owner moved patiently between customers. At one point, he began speaking to a girl who could have been an art student. I watched the confidence with which she held her camera, the way she asked questions like she already knew half the answer.

I watched her and thought, "We are both still learning; she is just steps ahead."

The shopkeeper handed me several cameras to feel their weight, their resistance, to understand each function and level of control.

When I walked out of the shop, I held in my hands an AGFA Selectronic 3, a half-automatic instead.

I had made a decision for the woman I was still to become. It was November. I hadn't planned to use the camera until summer when the meadow had turned yellow and purple.

The purchase was an attempt at both present and future — to hold a moment before it slips through my bones and flesh, sinking into the earth.

There was a pull towards something that grounds me in the now, slows me down in times when everything feels rushed or performed.

24 shots rather than constant phone snapshots. Each image requires attention, a reciprocal interaction. The idea forms in the head, and a decision is made without knowing the outcome until the film is developed.

A boundary is not a fixed idea. It is a direction. The 24 frames don't limit what you see, but they change how you look.

Now, when I take a picture, it is not the stillness that intrigues me. It's the movement inside the moment, the motion within the image.

There is a particular moment that comes to mind. Our first apartment in Grindelwald. I sit on the balcony with a glass of wine; we have just arrived. I cheer with the Eiger to our first conversation. I wrote about it then, a different way of holding a moment.

The moment of befriending a mountain.

The real beats of change rarely happen in front of a camera. Most inner motion is invisible, sometimes even unnoticed to the self.

We arrived in Switzerland with a clear picture of where we were going. You wake up one morning and realize the picture has changed colors like the meadows — not the direction, just the next film. What can feel sudden is a touchstone of development. The goal had been reshaping for months before cracking open.

If we outgrow a goal, should we stick to it just because we once said so?

Switzerland was never just the means to an end. It was where I developed the capacity to build from scratch. To hold uncertainty. To stay in motion even when nothing outside was moving.

For the last three years, it's been my inner world moving. Now it's going to be my outer world moving.

Choosing to move is different from being carried by life happening to you.

I used to have a fixed image of myself with the same certainty as what a photograph shows. Not consistent enough in my habits. Not disciplined enough with my actions. Never ready enough to show up. Adapting to what's been in front of me rather than making a clear decision.

As if the woman who found herself caught in that moment was the whole story.

The moment we label or categorize, we stop seeing the aliveness in things.

We do the same with nature, calling it a resource, a backdrop or scenery as if it were static and waiting to be used rather than continuously, alive.

As we are leaving behind the stability we have built, a successful job from the outside, our first home together, it can feel as if we are starting from the beginning.

I may have bought the camera precisely because I am leaving, to see what's been there all along.

I hope something in these letters moves inside you, even quietly. Thank you for your attention and your time. It is a gift to be connected through words.

With love, Zaza