Goodbye, Irvington

By the time I was 12 years old I’d already lived in 6 different homes in 4 different towns. In the 8 years Chris and I have been together, we’ve never stayed put for longer than a couple years. Moving has always been a huge part of my life, one that I usually welcome as a way of neatly organizing my life into chapters. And yet, when I was 14 and we transitioned into our 7th home in our 5th city… I cried.

A LOT.

I had always been a creative child, but my own personal grasp of the art world was only then beginning to expand beyond the childhood standards of painting and drawing. I hadn’t even come close to touching a camera yet, so much of the friendship and memories I had built over the few years we spent in Davis while my mom finished her art degree were to be immortalized in nothing but angsty chicken scratch.

You bet your buns I picked up photography real fast once we settled into our next hometown. I started off with point-and-shoot cameras and moved on to SLRs when I was 16. Eventually I picked up a digital camera, but even back then I truly cherished the sentiments behind film.

A real, tangible, stuff-it-under-my-pillow-while-I-sleep photograph. A photo with soul — my soul — that’s as intrinsic to the resulting image as the plastic it’s imprinted on.

Last week I said goodbye to another place I once called home. While I’m ready to say goodbye to this apartment, I won’t kid myself into thinking that I didn’t have some awesome times here in Irvington.

This was our first Portland apartment, and the place where I first shot a Rolleiflex. I thought it fitting that I end our time here on a similar note.

I won’t be stuffing these pictures under my pillow, but I will cherish them, and my time here, always.