On a six day backpacking trip in Washington state's alpine lakes region, aptly named the Enchantments, I gave up a significant percentage of precious pack weight to my Canon F1 (yep, a metal brick) along with several rolls of film, and I felt pressure to make it earn its place. With stunning landscapes at every turn you would think this an easy task, but I had seen these beautiful vistas abundantly represented on google prior to hitting the trail. Happily, my iPhone served to satisfy that every-turn urge, so I deliberately set myself, and that damn-heavy Canon, to the mediation of how the internal state informs seeing.
Negative space is an art world term defined as the area between and around objects becoming subject itself. There is a correlation between negative space and a recurring feature of life - the longer you live the more time you will spend in the in-between state. Uncertainty is a brooding and unwelcome companion. It inhabits the in-between we find ourselves passing through regularly, like an elevator between floors, with the valid concern of getting stuck tapping into the spectre of claustrophobia. In-between occurs regularly by choice, and intermittently despite best intentions when plans fall apart, and when processes fail to produce expected results. And there you are, alone with uncertainty growing larger and taking up ever more limited resources like energy, and air. The menace evolves not only in size, but in depth and detail, sharpening into bright, clear points.
What drew my eye in this ethereal and savage place was the negative space; A memory of earth in receding ice. The shape of melted ice surrounding granite fragments. The space in between - like the pause between exhale and inhale in yoga, where Savasana (corpse pose) is said to be the hardest to perfect. I can attest to that difficulty: to be aware, yet do nothing; take note of the physical self without adjusting or judging; observe breath without controlling duration or quality; hear the heart without counting it’s beats; hear thoughts without following or banishing them. These images, that earned the few analog frames allowed on that trek, now as then, take me past enduring or escaping the in-between of this moment and narrate the lesson of consciously and patiently inhabiting that space.
© Donna Moyer Photography