Permanence
Recently I’ve found myself making pictures in the local cemetery. My main subject is the way that nature asserts itself over the gravestones, our permanent memorials. This has me thinking about how photography is related to these monuments to the dead and how it affects what I photograph.
Making photographs has a dual function. On one hand photography is all about trying to stop time. By taking a picture at certain moment we halt the process of change that time is inevitably conducting on our subject. In the photograph the flower does not wither, the sun does not set, the child does not grow old. 
The picture affirms that this moment, this thing, this person, are important enough to be fixed in time. The most common subject matters give testament to this fact. Loads of pictures are taken at graduations, weddings, and births because they are of such short duration. One day or less events that somehow deserve to be recorded. This desire to make permanent the impermanent is also often a factor in the selection of static objects for subject matter. The natural world, in its constant state of change, is a favourite subject for photographers. This rendering permanent through photography is illusory. In reality all things change, even eventually the photograph that was meant to solidify the subject. The way things were can never be exactly the way things are. To express this the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus says that you cannot step into the same river twice. Photography cannot change the fact that everything is constantly in flux.
The placing of gravestones carries out a similar function as photography and carries with it a similar dichotomy. The inscribed stone affirms the importance of the life of the individual. We use stone for this because it feels permanent. It lasts longer than we do, so it seems to last forever. Just as photography is drawn to the natural, so too is natural imagery used on those monuments. It is as if to say that if the fleeting beauty of a flower or tree can be preserved in stone, so can the memory of the individual. At the same time, however, cemeteries serve to remind us that there is no way to truly stay the hand of time. Those memorialized are forever gone. The gravestones themselves, our permanent monuments, are caught up in the movement of time. Trees crush monuments, inscriptions fade, moss covers and changes the figures carved in the stone. It is these assertions of nature over our attempts at permanence that I find photographically fascinating for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I find it humbling to be reminded that any of our attempts at permanence are ultimately futile. We, and the things we make, simply cannot outlast the forces of nature. Secondly, I also find this assertion of nature to be a window into the things that do endure. It is those things that eternally reoccur through the cycles of time that are truly permanent. Beauty is the one that photography seeks to hold onto. Even though this particular beautiful thing will pass away, there are more beautiful things to come. Even though the water in the river changes, the river endures. I know that as time changes, as my photographs fade and the gravestones that I photograph topple, it will be Beauty that carries on.
