Living Another Life Through Photography

Figure Study No. 1, Broadmoor Hotel

I’ve been watching a lot of random videos on YouTube lately.  I say random because they’re served up to me randomly by the YouTube algorithm on topics I would not have picked for myself and that don’t really seem connected – videos of impressively large cargo ships sailing into ports and through canals on the Great Lakes, videos of roaring and flaming dragster engines being fired up with nitrous oxide and helmet cams of the drivers making their runs, videos of single and sometimes lonely people filming their everyday lives in places like Japan, Korea, and China. 

The topics seem random, but YouTube knows me well I suppose.  I can’t stop watching them, they’re fascinating to me.  I wonder what it’s like to be the captain of a large sailing ship on the Great Lakes, or a race car driver driving a dragster at 300 miles per hour, or a salaryman riding the trains in Tokyo.  I imagine myself in their place and I wonder if my life would feel different to me for it. 

I have an ordinary life.  Probably most people do.  Maybe photography is my alter ego.  A persona I can inhabit.  Something that someone on a Great Lakes freighter, or in a dragster cockpit, or in a tiny apartment in Japan can look at and say, “I wonder what it’s like to be a photographer and to make those pictures.”

I’ve always been drawn to the pose and the expression of the figure in this photograph. It’s so reflective, so dreamy. Maybe she’s reflecting on the nature of her own life. Or maybe she’s imagining what it would be like to live a different life entirely.