Rating: 4 out of 5

An interesting memoir of an interesting photographer. I knew of her work but not of her life. Some poignant points, some bits that made me think, and some that made me question whether seeing a certain thing through a lens was how I feel it should have been experienced.

Highlighted passages:

I don’t have a memory of the man; I have a photograph. I rush upstairs to the scrapbooks and there he is. I’ve lost any clear idea of what my father really looked like, how he moved, sounded; the him-ness of him

It isn’t death that stole my father from me; it’s photographs

As for me, I see both the beauty and the dark side of things; the loveliness of cornfields and full sails, but the ruin as well! And I see them at the same time, at once ecstatic at the beauty of things and chary of that ecstasy. The Japanese have a phrase for this dual perception: mono no aware. It means “beauty tinged with sadness” for there cannot be any real beauty without the indolic whiff of decay. For me living is the same thing as dying, and loving is the same thing as losing, and this does not make me a madwoman; I believe it can make me better at living, and better at loving, and just possibly better at seeing

We don’t talk much about what happens when we die. Years ago, sex was the unmentionable thing; now it’s death

When someone dies, where does it all go? Proust has his answer and its the one I take most comfort inn - it ultimately resides in the loving, and in the making, and in the living of evert present day

Originally posted to my Goodreads account