Imagine we are seated at my small wooden kitchen table, between us over-stuffed shoe boxes and manila envelopes spew forth their contents. We've had a few drinks, and I sip from my glass- plied enough by now to share this once-loved collection of images and words that for years I compiled with care, only to pack away in the closet and various drawers for the dust and moths to admire. I sit quietly as you sift through the heaps of Polaroid’s, each with a different face, each from a different time and place in my life and the lives of the people pictured.

You notice each Polaroid is marked at the bottom with a word or phrase. "Happy Birthday," is scribbled in blue ink on the bottom of a Polaroid of a girl draped glamorously over the edge of the empty bath tub she, in her panties and blue sweater, sits in, gazing at the camera. "Blessings" reads another- this of the rich, chocolate face of a waiter at Ihop. His smile dominates the glossy panel of the picture, which I admit is a little blurry and off-colored. No camera could ever really capture skin so deep dark, a smile so electric. His teeth in the photo look like creamy pearls, in life they were white.

You look to me for explanation. "He was a waiter that served my ex-boyfriend and I milkshakes on the only day I can remember when it snowed enough in downtown Seattle to shut the city down. I had a thing for chocolate shakes then. He was nice, and laughed at my order." You hold up the picture of the girl as if to say "and her?" Her name is Virginia. She was my neighbor the old, sterile dormitory I lived in as a sophmore in college. The rooms smelled like dust and the faint odor of bleaching agent. We use to pretend the dorm was once a hospital ward, and make up stories about the patients that held our rooms. I can remember none of them, but I can remember the smell of the place, and Virginia. She was a story too beautiful and complex to write. I tried. But there were never words enough to capture her. "She is the reason this all began," I'd tell you. She, and all the strange and complex people that nothing- not writing, nor a picture could ever fully express. "This all began, because of people so beautiful, and complicated they defied and yet inspired words to try to capture them." I think I was in love with everyone I photographed. No, I know I was.

Virginia was the first love (and perhaps curiosity) to pose for me, to tell me what I wanted to know. "What is your favorite word? What words make you feel profoundly?" I wanted to know how these ineffable beings would vocalize themselves; what words resonated deep in their characters- those places I wanted to go but could never get to. When I asked her, she said without a second's thought "Happy Birthday!" and laughed. She was beautiful, and the phrase somehow fit her perfectly...although of course neither of us could ever express why. That was true for almost everyone I asked over the years for the word or phrase that moved them or "spoke" to them more than any other; many people could offer their choice without much thought, but all struggled to vocalize why this word, this phrase meant something important to them, or why they loved it. We were both always at an impass. Even when explanations were offered they felt flat or incomplete. I liked it better when people would speak without explanation. Imagination could prevail in the absence of explanation. Imagination is the only thing that can even come close to capturing the essence of a person; it is that which allows one to on the evocation of a word transcend themself to merge with another in some way, to get inside, perhaps just a small corner of them.

More than the desire to understand people, the desire to capture and preserve them in some way drove my collection. It wasn't enough to simply remember these people, and their words, or jot them down in some one-dimensional note book- I had to somehow capture the origin- the face, the body, the personality from which the meaning of each word derived. The people were always more important that the words they provided to explain some aspect of themselves. I believe now I may have been out to collect them, these strangers who's lives crossed with my own sometimes only for a moment, or sometimes in friendships or affairs that linger still now. I wanted to know, and try to identify with them in some meaningful way, before they drifted away from me- before they became ghosts of a moment, and then only shadows, dissolving, forgotten. It is true that there is something unrepeatable about these people at the moments when I asked them to consider themselves, their lives, and the function and meaning of language in their existence. What one day represented the word that in some way summed up a profound belief or desire- or perhaps their sense of self- would, I know, change just as people change. For some, these words, which they claimed as the most powerful or expressive they knew, have been forgotten, and that once important meaning lost. Just as you cannot replicate a Polaroid, you cannot replicate a person at a single moment in their life, especially those fleeting and seemingly insignificant ones when you delivered an order of milkshakes to a strange couple with an old camera on a snowy day or picked passenger up in your cab one winter night, or stopped by to chat carelessly to an old friend. I loved taking advantage of these moments. With these pictures I tried freeze time and people, holding on, and preserving them together the only way I knew how. As for the question I ritualistically asked of each subject, I can only say I loved slowing people down in their daily business to consider the value of something so easily taken for granted, and yet as powerful and necessary as language is to our lives, and selves.

Sitting before my fast assembly of photos I would explain all this to you, while we surveyed all these captured moments, all these captured souls- so you could see them for what they were suppose to be, and what now I can only explain as my love of people manifested in squares of light and echoless sound. And I expect that you would ask what I sometimes ask myself: "Why did you stop collecting? What will you do with all this...what did you want to do with all this?" I don't know. I would sip my drink, and look searchingly over it all, thinking "I don't know" and saying finally to you the truth...I collected without knowing why, or without a thought about what to do with the collection. At the time, the motives for collecting waxed and waned in my consciousness. I did not always remember why I began this venture. It is only now, after I've put away my questions and camera to consider the collection that I remember why it all began, although I cannot say that remembering the motive much explains it. What did I want from this collection? To what purpose was it intended? I don't know.

All the pictures live now in cupboards, closets and drawers, not unloved but without a purpose for me to put them to. They simply exist. I have begun to think about returning to collection- it has been months since I last asked my question and photographed anyone- but without a sense of purpose I cannot bring myself to continue. At one time, the experience of collection was enough, and I use to look over the images with a sense of awe for the beauty and complexity of human lives. Now, I feel that I must have a purpose greater than simple love and desire. Even preservation is not possible while these images rest in heaps, hidden away, uncatalogued, unexplained, and without display. What use are these things without some end to put them to? Why collect only to stuff away somewhere in darkness? I feel I have done no justice by these subjects, and I loved them. I saw in them some part of myself that I wanted to understand, as much as I wanted to understand them, and yet I remain without a clear sense of what it all means. I believe the collection deserves explanation and order, something more than simply being hoarded and by and by forgotten. If I begin again, I will do so with the intent of creating (or recreating) something from all these voices, all these words, all these glimpses of lives captured on film. I'm not sure what yet, but perhaps in time it will come to me. As I sat with you before my strange assembly I would tell you this ("One day, I'll figure out what it means and what to do with it") and turn the subject to easier things. I would show you my favorites, the one's that touch and move me in some way still- the ones I can feel....:

1. Terra Clarke, a friend and possibly one of my great crushes:
In the picture she lays with her head on her stretched out arm, the acres of brown hair that in memories of her cascaded down her back in the picture softly frame her face, which is blurry- like a dream. The picture reads: Strawberry Fields

2. Joseph, the cabby that picked me up from the bar late on my 21st birthday in Seattle:
The picture is dark and Joseph is barely discernible against the lights of passing cars and the darkness of that wet night in January. He looks like a ghost, his rich olive skin bleeding in to the darkness. I remember his voice; it was rich with an accent I could not place. Soft. Subtly seductive. The picture reads: Blessings

3. A girl I met at a party, whose name is now utterly lost to me:
In her horn-rimmed black glasses and tight blue cardigan she looks like she would be called Olive, or June...something dated, something sweet. She is pretty in an unusual way. She brushes her hair from her face as she laughs, seemingly unaware that she is being photographed. Tattoos mark her neck and forearm. The picture reads: Phantasmagoric

4. The waiter at Ihop the day it snowed so hard the city shut down:
He laughs uncomfortably. He did not like being photographed, and it shows even through his smile. He was kind, though, and intrigued by my question, although he struggled to think of a word that he found particularly meaningful. I liked him, his warmth and the way he teased me for ordering a milk shake on a day so cold, and I wanted an answer from him. I rephrased my question: "What about a word that feels really good to say, something that you love the feel and the sound of?" The picture reads: Hey-yah!

Reflecting on these photos, I admit I feel the same desire to discover new faces and identities, or new corners of those familiar people that I call friends, family, and lovers. Perhaps, I might return to people I've questioned before, and ask them to revisit their relationship to language. What has changed? What moves you now? Perhaps, I will discover entirely new people; or rather discover in them some kernel of personal meaning or truth bigger than us both. Leafing through my collection, with you I might ask for your answer. Now that we have shared these lives and words together, what moves you? Or perhaps, I would simply sigh over the faces smiling, staring, or glancing away from me and begin to pack it all up again, to take out some other date, perhaps over wine, perhaps with someone else, perhaps with a discovered sense of purpose.

H.