Loire Valley, France

These photos were taken on a school trip to France (we stayed in Tours, one of the historic towns of the Loire Valley, "the cradle of the French language") in May 2007. Having found the negatives a few days ago by accident I realized I had never scanned most of them and I had to attend to that mistake immediately. It had a very Proustian effect on me, especially when I opened the .doc file containing the report we had to write for our French class afterwards. Its honesty surprised me; I consider myself to be a more open person now than I was in 2007, yet if I were to write that report today, I would probably omit most of what I chose to include in the original version and focus on less personal things. It escapes me how at the time I was not in the least afraid of anyone else but me reading those metaphors.

What I find most interesting about the photos is the (illusory) sense of carefreeness they exude. I know that nostalgia romanticizes the past and I know that despite being in France (or precisely because of it -- our trip certainly did have a fair share of drama) each of us had their problems to cope with, but I think that somewhere along the way we became completely devoid of the ability to be this carefree ever again. I always say I am content to live Here and Now and wouldn't trade it for other times and places, but I often feel as if some things progress too rapidly for me to be able to stay present in the moment and not fall behind. Perhaps I would prefer not to assume the responsibility that comes with age.





« Il n’ya pas de « était ». Le temps est. Si « était » existait, il n’y aurait ni soufferance, ni tristesse. » (Faulkner)







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