2021 08 02
When does memory begin?

This photograph of several women sitting on the top deck of the Edgartown pier in Martha’s Vineyard is simple enough.

Two women huddled in the left corner of the frame are seemingly deep in conversation while in the upper right frame of the photo another pair of women seem less connected to each other. One women looks straight ahead to the harbor scene in front of her while the other one looks slightly to her left. It’s this small detached  gesture - the slight looking away - along with the diagonal line of the bench connecting the strangers to each other that draws me into the picture.

I spent many summers on Martha’s Vineyard as a child and into young adulthood. It was a privileged experience, lazy summer days on white sand beaches, tennis lessons on dusty red clay courts, interspersed with a procession of summer-time jobs. My father had a favorite saying then, “You don’t know what you got until it’s gone.” In that, and many things, he was right.