Shooting in the park

After a recent spell of travel, I returned home to Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where I have lived for the past nine years. I began to take photographs of the park, not for the first time, but for the first time in an attentive way. The naturalist John Muir once wrote, “Most people are on the world, not in it.” I went back to the same sections, day after day, the same leaf-littered stretch of lawn, the same work site, the same stands of trees. I went in different weather conditions, in snow and rain and bright sunshine, and I went at different times of day. Shooting roll after roll, I began to accumulate a highly personal composite image of the park.

The seasons turned. The trees changed radically or not at all. At a time when politics made the flow of time feel hectic, shooting in the park slowed me down, and using film slowed me down further.

Teju Cole, The Image of Time.