Like a segment of Tangerine

Like a segment of tangerine is a line taken from a book I read when my son turned one years old. Teaching a Stone to Talk, by Annie Dillard. In the book she talks about the experience of watching an eclipse with her partner. Sitting a top a rock off the side of a road, with strangers all around, in one shared global event. Within Dillard describes the strange sensation of witnessing the end and the beginning of something. A total eclipse of the sun.

I too felt this strangeness of the eclipse. The first one that I witnessed with my son. The slow progression of change in light and perception. The sanguine yellow that blankets all the eye can see. The oddness of all color you thought you knew to be true. Drained and muted. The way the body feels. Just off. Uncomfortable. Turning to look at someone you love only you do not recognize them for the silver skin draping over their limbs. Then, just as slowly as it came, the wonder and the malaise begin to lift. And you recognize the sweet and the familiar once again.

This experience in part stands like a metaphor for the transistion that is felt when having a child. There was my life before my son. Then there is the beginning of it with him. The event of leaving something of the self behind and becoming something entirely new. A unique awareness of the old and the recognition of the new.

This work made with my son and my father, from two different experiences. August 21, 2017 eclipse paired with the April 8, 2024 eclipse using a polaroid land camera that belonged to my grandmother.