I wonder where she is now?


I don't even remember her name.
Even though she worked in my office in Amsterdam for a couple of years.
About 7-8 years ago I shot a series of portraits of some of my coworkers.
Using an old camera and polaroid film.
I washed the negatives of the polaroid sheets and printed from those.

My archives, if you could call my boxes of unsorted prints
and slides and negatives that,
are filled with pictures of people
I have met briefly or worked with periodically.

Being dreadfully sloppy I have no notes of who most of these people are.
Dreadfully senile as I must be I can't recall most their names.

Sometimes I wonder where life has taken them.
What became of them.
Where they live or work now.
How many kids they have.
What car they drive.
No, not really, I wouldn't ask what car they drive.
For some reason that's never interested me.

Maybe I haven't been interested enough in any of these people.
They've served as objects interesting for the lens.
I've mostly given them a print or two, so it's not as I didn't give anything at all back.

I nowadays shoot almost exclusively digitally.
It suits my restless character well.
So I get people's e-mail addresses.
They'll get a couple of jpegs.
Some of those names I remember to save in my online address book.
That doesn't necessarily translate into a better memory of who they are.

Just as my photo archives, my e-mail address book is full of names I can't recall I know.
They are names I can't connect with a face, or anything else for that matter.

Oh, how I admire people who archive properly,
and keep their address books complete with notes and phone numbers and all.
Sending on Holiday Greetings promptly to a million people every year.
Never missing any body's birthday.
Never missing anything it seems.
How do they find the time?
How do they remember to check who everyone is, and when.

One day I won't probably even remember my own name.
Nor recognize my own face in the mirror.
But that's another story.
Meanwhile I suffer only from photo archival self-induced Alzheimer.

Comments