The shadow knows but does not tell

that's me on the right; it was very windy

Like yesterday’s picture, today’s includes the photographer’s shadow (i.e., me). It’s a common device, using a shadow as a human stand-in. A couple months ago at MOMA I saw a piece comprised of individually framed snapshots from the 1920’s to 1970’s that caught the photographer’s shadow. Though the grouping of the photographs and their accidental subject matter was anything but casual, they were memorable as a record of a time before photographic irony, and the anonymous subjects, small scale, and shadows made the snapshots seem especially ephemeral. Last week I visited the museum and experienced impermanence firsthand; the photos were no longer up.