“Asking to Be Our Best Selves”

I’m quoting Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny in the title to today’s post.

I want to be clear that I’m not going to spend this entire post on politics.

It is a central theme, however.

I want to use that as a launching point as I discuss my reflections on everything that led up to making this composition and where I am now several months later.

Producing art in any form is invariably a political act, whether we want to acknowledge that or not.

I think that’s especially true with landscape photography (and not just that medium).

We as landscape photographers can be overt about it.

Even when we aren’t and intend to capture something we see as beautiful, striking, haunting, or what have you, we’re de facto engaging in a real sense with geopolitics.

How can it be otherwise?

In Chapter 19: Be a Patriot of On Tyranny, Snyder succinctly—and rather accurately, imo—describes what not to do, especially as a specific leader has done, much to our cost (Snyder smartly never names names). And what the regular person can and should do to live up to that term.

The latter is what I’m considering here.

Part of Snyder’s message is pretty simple though not always easy in practice: model the best that humanity has to offer to everyone around you.

(He also took his own advice and went to Canada).

Others have said similar.

Abraham Lincoln spoke of the “angels of our better nature” in his first inaugural address in 1861.

Barack Obama wrote about the Audacity of Hope in his book by that name.

You may now be asking yourself, what in the world does this photo have to do with any of that?

You’re right to ask. I’ll try to narrate where I’m going with this. Please bear with me to the end.

I produced the raw image of this scene the one morning I got to spend at Malin Head, the northern most point in the Republic of Ireland, on an incredibly windy morning with heavy mist.

Spending 10 days or thereabouts in Erin is probably one of the most impulsive acts I have taken in my life.

I talked about this a bit in my April 12 and May 25 blog posts.

I literally got the idea in my head, made some preliminary investigations into whether it was in my budget, what the relative logistics of getting around on my own as a solo traveler were, etc., and pulled the trigger.

All within something like a 72-hour period.

I selected about six locations I thought I had time to see relatively near where I was staying in County Donegal but did not plan a specific itinerary.

Instead I played it by ear based on weather and tidal conditions. A common practice among landscape photographers.

I did not know what to expect from people: from the kind chap at the airport who helped me get through the gate in the car park after hail ruined my ticket, to the charming couple who hosted me at their home, to travelers from Ireland and elsewhere whom I shared the house with for the length of my stay (I met an incredibly lovely French quartet as well as a sharp Irish filmographer and his eloquent girlfriend from Zimbabwe, among others), to the bright eyed person behind the till at Kavanagh’s Supervalu as I mistakenly went to purchase Jameson too early in the day, and so on.

This is the point I want to drive home.

People weren’t just lovely to me at every encounter. Often in what I saw as a wonderfully poetic Irish way. And beyond the Irish, too.

Living where I do, in an ostensibly progressive place (spoiler, it isn’t always), I forget what the best of ourselves looks like.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating at all when I write that I was far more relaxed physically over my time in the land that Yeats called home than I am in my latest residence in New England.

I don’t just chalk that up to being on a workcation.

I implicitly trusted people, and they treated me in kind.

It wasn’t forced either.

I didn’t need to guess or be sus, as the kids say. I could readily read what people felt on their faces.

Hopefully they read it on mine as well. Certainly in my words when I admitted I was far from home.

If you’ve stayed with me on this journey, here’s what I want to say about the photograph.

There are moments in life where you understand how small you are.

By that I do not mean that you feel inadequate or that you put your worth aside.

Don’t ever let go of who you are and what you add.

At the same time, I ask you to contemplate this at once incredibly tiny yet vast section of where the land ends and ocean begins.

The anonymous couple walking through the scene helps accentuate the absolute scale we’re wrestling with.

We only see so much in front of us with clarity. All that lays beyond feels less distinct.

I’m borrowing from other’s words when I write that I promise this is where the magic of our pale blue dot and indeed the whole of the universe lays.

To circle back to Snyder’s vision of the future, we must have the courage to imagine a better tomorrow rather than resign ourselves to a cynical politics that feels eternal.

Travel is becoming prohibitively expensive, especially from the U.S to elsewhere.

In the short term, that is going to accelerate and get worse.

Do it if you can. Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t.

But also know that this is by design.

Visiting other places and meeting people different than you is what we are endlessly pressured into avoiding.

And so of course it is one of the most urgent things we can and should do.