train of thought

a very long time ago (before email) a friend told me that he preferred to write letters over using the telephone. when i asked him why, he told me to imagine all the consecutive positions of a letter in space -- and to visualize them together. they'd make a kind of worm-like object in space. then imagine it touching the author's hand on one and and the recipient's hand on the other.

he felt that, in that way, he was indirectly actually touching his friend's hand on the other side.

that's the first time i visualized time as a fourth dimension -- if it is. many types of images come to mind on this theme.

there was a video someone had made where he actually gathered people of every age -- the youngest was newborn and the oldest was in her eighties, i believe -- lined them up without clothing, and filmed as his camera want past them. i've searched to find it, unsuccessfully at the moment*.

*EDIT: as time goes by, the human body, BBC. thank you, owmyhands!

the other was a family who had a tradition of taking individual portraits of each of the members every year for 30 years.

variations on that them are videos comprised of daily portraits in the same spot over time.

blurred exposures, combined exposures, moving photographs, all sorts of trails -- star trails, car trails... there are so many ways to show time.

yeah. this is stuff i think about when i'm waiting for the train.


like it? click it!
i took this at monastiraki station yesterday (geotagged on its flickr page) after a wonderful mayday with friends, strolling around the foot of the acropolis, and having a delicious lunch at monastiraki's cafe avissinia. it helped that i had some ouzo (on ice, with lemon soda. yum.)

this is a 10-second hand-held exposure.