00062

In these blogs I’ve looked at particular contact sheets, such as #62 for this essay, and either discussed the background behind the photographs or recounted anecdotes suggested by the pictures. 

Contact sheet #62 is a good illustration of the profound depression I had through most of my senior year at college.  The photos are mostly of the Cornell College homecoming celebration in October 1977.  A dorm decoration contest.  The parade.  The big football game.

Most people have never had a depressive episode.  It is like having eyeglasses on the world that have gotten smudged, dirty.  It happens over time, so you don’t notice how bad your vision is getting.  It’s only after you clean your glasses, or the depression lifts, that you can see clearly and notice how bad it had gotten.

I remember very little of the time.  That’s one of the symptoms of the depression.  Nothing happens that’s interesting enough to log into the memory.  You can see it in the photographs.  They are distant, uninvolved.  This is the corollary to one of my insights into photography:  Your connection as a photographer to your subject is mirrored in the connection your photograph has to its audience.  If you as a photographer are not connected to your subject then the photographs won’t connect to the audience.  They demonstrate the distance.

When these photos were taken I lived in married student housing with Janet Paige Kuller.  She spent her workday at the Linn County Home as a recreational therapist.  She tried to get the diverse group of disabled people engaged in play time.  I had few friends at Cornell College at the time.  Most had graduated the year before.  Chris Dewey remained, but I didn’t see him as frequently as when we lived on the same floor in the same dormitory. 

I enjoyed the subjects I was studying.  Philosophy, theology, history, English, art.  But I had my first inkling that my reasoning, my intelligence, was only going to take me so far in what I was seeking.

For example, Chris Dewey introduced me to the I Ching as an ancient Chinese oracle.  He said that it would answer questions.  I thought a while about this.  What question should I ask an ancient Chinese oracle if I wanted to hear from God’s lips to my ears?  So, I finally asked the I Ching, “What question should I ask an ancient Chinese oracle if I wanted to hear from God’s lips to my ears?”

The image I got from the I Ching was “treading on the tail of a tiger.”  The tiger took pity on me and did not threaten danger as a result of my youthful folly.

That got my attention.  There was more out there that I needed to learn, that my cogitation alone wouldn’t process and was unlikely to show up on a course syllabus at Cornell College.

I couldn’t figure out how to improve the relationship with Janet.  She was unhappy and I couldn’t make her happy.  We weren't happy as a couple and this depressed me.

The other set of photos on this contact sheet are of Julia Wilkins after she got her insurance pay-out on a car.  I like the exuberance she shows with the wad of cash.

I wonder what ever happened to her.  I thought that she was going on to nursing school.  No internet search has worked.  Julia is someone I could have been closer friends with, but didn’t.  Janet really did not like my having women friends.  When she finally dumped me three years after these photographs, I discovered that all my women friends were lesbian.

The photos discussed in this essay can be found in the Photos by Number section of the website under the gallery “00062.”