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Blow Up | Mar 07 2006

Sometimes I try to remember her, to see her before me, but it’s difficult. Everything is fuzzy. At best what I remember, or what I remember best, are photographs.

Recently, while walking through Prospect Park, I passed a patch of grass where we once sat after riding a pedal boat. I have some photos of her from that day, taken on a blanket. I think of these as the “betrayer photos,” because, as I learned later, she was betraying me then. Possibly this designation fits every photo I ever took of her, but these are the only ones I’m certain about. Whenever I look at them, I can’t help but turn them around in my mind and see myself through her eyes. She thinks: He doesn’t know.

And it’s true: he doesn’t.

It’s a bit like Blow Up. A man photographs a couple in a deserted park, and then discovers, in the background of some of the photos, possible evidence of a murder.

Although I didn’t photograph a murder that day, I was no less oblivious.

And who knows, perhaps I’m oblivious still; perhaps these are not “betrayer photos” at all, but something else, something that will only become clear as she recedes even further into the distance.