The Lost Particles

Water is the universal solvent. Over time there is no thing it does not break down, cut through, gouge, erode, destroy. The sea produced us and the sea will reclaim us. All things are merely collections of particles. All things are assemblies of smaller things. Water, which is also a collection of particles, is the great sculptor of the Earth and the great creator of us all. It is the higher power that influences so much of geology and nature that it would be easy to revere it as a god. The ocean, barely visible at the center of this photograph, has receded. It is low tide. Viewed as a cutaway diagram in some earth science textbook, we can see many layers oft hidden in this image and the actions of time, pressure and water at work. But this is not a geology primer. Water, erosion, plate-tectonics - you already know all this. The power of the ocean, the insignificance of man and the humbling scale of time. Been there. Utah, Arizona, there are far more dramatic examples than this. But this image is personal. This chasm is unique. You've seen the Narrows of Zion and the smooth red sandstone canyons of Colorado in so many photographs that such subjects and angles have become rote. This chasm is in California, on a remote beach that can only be accessed when the tide is dead low. I chose this image because it is arresting to me. When I see it among my photographs I am always struck by it. It feels to me alive somehow. I never grow tired of looking at it. It is visually interactive, almost flowing. There is a visceral quality to the textures that pleases the eye. The smooth packed sand that looks like a road or a river. The gnarled rock walls that I can only describe as frozen slag. The soft green carpets of ice plants above them. The hint of sea foam where the wave spills onto the beach. And then there is the light. Everything about this image draws the eye in toward the sea. Photographs can, with nothing more than shapes and lines and light, pull us out of one world and into another. They can offer us a safe and sane escape. Without numbing, without avoidance or isolation, photographs can, for a few moments, take us away. But unlike other mediums they will lay us gently back down where we belong. There is no hangover, no guilt, no shame. Perhaps the true definition of art is that we gain something from it. Art does not erode. Our particles are not stripped away leaving us smaller. The arts, and photography among them, puts some of those lost particles back.

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© 2011, Serpent Box