She left them all over her apartment and all over the back seat of her car.
Photographs. She had started off doing portraits, then moved on to landscapes and then some odd
avant-garde stuff. When we were dating she was in her
black and white stage, and was doing what I called-
"Ansel Adams moves to the suburbs."
"It's sepia" she said, "not black and white."
Well,
I knew that.
What was terrific about her work, really special, was that she prefered reflected photos. Lights and images that were second hand. People looking back from mirrors, sunsets coming out of office building windows and trees shown on chrome bumpers. Everything was an artifact, an echo. I told her it was like she wanted to show the world the second image, not the picture she was taking, but the picture the world was taking of the photo she took. She smiled and said NO.
She said she was capturing the way the world soaked up images. She wanted to give different versions of everyday life, and by making them separate and reflected it gave her a different angle of attack. The absence of color just reinforced that, she said.
I don't know about all of that. But it was cool stuff, and often breathtaking.
She did a self portrait once- standing on the edge of a bridge, camera in hand, shadow silhouette against a car.
What do you see?-I asked her- What is she doing, what is she thinking?
She is becoming one with the windshield, she is trying to become glass.