Point of Comparison

O f the lawn, a photograph exists, dated more than a century ago. The size of the camera has reduced over time, but at the date of the photo, it was still clumsy and large, the lens still projecting from a kind of foliated snout, and the face behind it still obscured by funereal drapery. The details, as in artificial intelligence generations, seem muddled, half-realized, especially of faces and hands, and of sources of movement owing to the weakness of the medium in sunlight. Like artificial intelligence also is the lifelessness of the subjects, who, in this case, have been seated in chairs on the lawn, in the sunlight, a baby in one lap, a dog obscuring one pair of feet, but this is the lifelessness of stillness and patience, of self-objectification and the temporary, then permanent, as the photo survives them, suspension of autonomy. They are a family group. They are not relations of mine. A family group of mine exists, also of figures seated in that place, their details clearer, as if more, that is, almost alive. Together, the photos show which trees have grown, which have been removed, extensions to the house, other changes, and certain dimensional differences which must have some other explanation, as yet unlocated. Neither feels correct.