AFTER THE FLOOD SERIES

As a documentary filmmaker, I worship at the altar of Our Lady of Perpetual Loss and Transformation. There, the speed of truth is set at 24 frames per second; always in motion, on the tip of my tongue, the tip of my fingers, slightly out of reach like the receding shores of an effervescent dream or this: I was filming the Southside in Durham, a historical African-American neighborhood slowly disappearing under the magic spell of gentrification when a worker called to me shouting from the construction site: “Slave labor! This is built on slave labor!” I crossed the street and approached him, camera in hand while he complained about stolen wages and broken promises. He was fired the next day. Feeling guilty and complicit, I offered him a job: to patch up the leaking roof of my studio. But he made it worse, and when the rain came, it poured and flooded my space including a cigar box containing my most cherished photographs. The alchemy of life can be a mysterious thing, sometimes defying the very laws of nature and in this case the rules of the photographic process. I let this mysterious journey continue for another week, allowing my photographs to be lost and found again in this ecstatic transformation; the images receding and advancing at once; ephemeral memories in the midst of loss.