The Photographs I Keep Taking of the Same Canals

I have photographed the same water for years and it has never once had the decency to look identical. #

I went through Amsterdam photographs today and discovered, once again, that I have a problem. The same canals. The same bridges. The same façades from angles separated by perhaps three metres. Winter, spring, summer, autumn. Morning, evening, rain, sun, lights, bicycles, boats, empty, crowded. If I were editing somebody else’s archive I would tell them to be ruthless. Delete duplicates. Keep the strongest image. Reduce. Curate. Fortunately this is my archive and I can be unreasonable. They are not duplicates to me. One was taken when Amsterdam was still new enough that I photographed every canal as proof. One was taken after work on a day I barely remember. One was taken while Yuri waited because I said one second, a phrase he now understands has no measurable relationship to actual seconds. One was taken during a walk when I was thinking about Mom. One belongs to a summer evening. One to a winter morning. One was shot because the water was perfectly still. Another because rain had destroyed every reflection. Visually, yes, repetition. Emotionally, completely different files. I sometimes think the photographs are less about the city than about duration. Put them in order and Amsterdam changes almost imperceptibly while my life changes behind the camera. The earliest ones from after the move feel different even when the subject is identical. I can see my attention. In those images the city is foreground. Later, Amsterdam becomes environment. The difference is impossible to explain to somebody who was not inside my head when I pressed the shutter. That is fine. Not every archive needs to be legible to strangers. I spent part of the afternoon making folders slightly more organised and then destroyed the organisation by finding another batch. Typical. Yuri looked over my shoulder. «That bridge again.» «Different year.» «Of course.» «Different light.» «Obviously.» Mockery from a man who benefits from having his own life documented by somebody else. I found photographs of him he had forgotten existed. That ended the prosecution. I found older images too, Italy mixed in among the years. Milano. Genova. Mom. Dad. Hikari from the years when a photograph of her was simply a photograph and not an object containing an absence. I did not stay there long. Not because I cannot. I can now. That is perhaps the difference. I don’t need to protect myself from the folders anymore. I can look, feel the old pressure in the chest, remember, and continue. There is no betrayal in continuing. The canal photographs after 2009 prove that more gently than anything I could write. The world kept appearing in front of the lens. Eventually Amsterdam did too. Today I took another photograph from the window. Same street. Same building opposite. New Sunday. Keep.

Remember me, Eclipse.