The Absence of Cows

A lonely cow pasture, a water trough and a well-trodden crater filled with muddy water. This is West Marin and these rolling green hills feed the dairy cows that make our milk and cheeses. It's hard to imagine milk here, unless its of the chocolate variety but anyone who's spent time on a dairy farm knows that cows are dirty animals and mud is as much a part of their milieu as it is a for a pig. Marin is the dairy capitol of California and California produces the most dairy in the United States. Such sights are common all over Marin but you have to get out and look for them. But this is how it always is. It's not what you're looking for, it's the accidental discovery that yields the greatest reward. Which is why photography is the perfect metaphor for life. I park my car and walk, never really knowing where I'm going or what I will find. I trust that what I need will present itself, and it always does. I find great aesthetic pleasure in the arrangement of geometric shapes in this image. Circles, rectangles and curved lines. And I love the feeling of recent emptiness. I know that earlier the cows were here -many cows. I can see the impressions made by their hooves. And I can imagine them standing around the trough drinking, because I have watched this ritual before. So what I find so compelling about this image is not what it shows, but what it doesn't It's the negative that moves me. The absence of subject matter that the objects conjure. It's the emptiness that I am drawn to and the ghostly feeling the emptiness evokes.

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