even mountains wear away in time

I thought about it the other day. I've been taking photographs since I was 12 or 13. It was 2008, I believe, the first time I really held a camera in my hands. I still remember one of my very first images: in the rain, on a cemetery path, a woman walking in the distance, blurred by the droplets, while the environment around her remained sharp.

Since then, it's become a habit. Almost a reflex. Like a way to stop time, if only for that brief moment.

In 2020, or 2021, during lockdown, I wanted to look back. I started reorganizing everything: photos, videos, forgotten folders, piled-up hard drives. As if to stop me dead in my tracks, one of them stopped working, without any warning. A considerable mass of files disappeared.

And then time passed.

Today, I'm done. I've learned to live with the absences. Perhaps from the photographs I have left, I'll one day make a blog or a book. Perhaps I'll try someday to recover the lost images and videos and turn them into a feature film. Whatever happens, everything is ephemeral.