Sunday, October 31, 2004

I had coveted a digital camera for months and months before I finally succumbed to buying one. And like most major purchases I have made in my life, the first emotion I felt upon ownership was not joy but doubt. I remember thinking, "I was never an avid-picture taker before... can I really justify that sort of cost for camera? "

And now, some months later I can unequivocally answer: yes. In fact, I have absorbed the digital camera into my life now so completely that last night I dreamt surroundings so beautiful that I took pictures of them with my a dream digital camera.

Ok, so aside from this disturbing fact that I am now mediating even my dream experiences though a lens, I am very much enjoying my new Canon A75. I take more pictures than I did before and I am finding new uses for photography that I was too stingy to investigate when I had to pay to develop film.

For example, I am beginning a series of personal digitization projects.

You see, I have a horrible memory when it comes to my own life. I realized this when I went through a portfolio of high school writing and artwork that my mother had collected out of her basement so I could put the stuff in my basement. I've been reading the material but its been slow going because each item resurrects a memory that I had almost completely forgotten (like my grade 9 French teacher's name or the fact that I once written monthly articles for the local newspaper on the goings on at my high school). And that's when then I came to this realization: without these artifacts, it would be unlikely that I would be able to remember much of anything at all of my life when I get seriously older. And this thought disturbed me.

But the idea of having to hold on to all of the detrius of my life didn't seem right either. I like the idea of living lightly and unencumbered (as much as possible) to physical things. But I'm like everyone else - I get attached to physical things. Like tshirts.

And so this is how the personal digitization project began. I pulled out an old favourite tshirt and hestitated to wear it because to wear it would be mean it would another wash, another fade and another step toward decay. But I couldn't simply keep every single item of favourite clothing - no more than I could keep every single report card or high school art project. And then came the epiphany - I didn't need the t-shirts themselves to help me remember them. I could just take a picture with my new digital camera.

This is the lengthly explaination for this: a series of photographs of my favourite tshirts.

Why publically post this pix? Because while one person's photos of tshirts is boring, everyone's photos of tshirts are somehow quite facinating.

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