The Take Away

It’s snowing this evening and I’m just heading out to take some late evening shots of the snowfall, the plows, and the foreign landscape of fresh white snow (for this year at least). I should be in bed, I have damn cold.

The car is running already, and here I am taking a quick glance through my photo files because I wanted to post something, because I wanted to say something. The car is running. 

I’ve never called myself a mentor before, and though I’ve talked about it and known about it conceptually, it’s not something I’ve tried or been comfortable doing. In my past, I guess I’ve mentored others, many of them, but it wasn’t formal and it wasn’t prolonged. But now, it means something, now it’s something that I’m thinking about. I’m mentoring a young and talented photographer who, among many things, is also a roommate and friend. That’s a lot of relationship to manage. The car is running.

It’s been a year since we met after she came home from an extended leave of absence from family and local friends. When we first talked she said she wanted to be a photographer, to take pictures in the difficult corners of the world, to go far beyond the horizons of comfort or the ordinary to shoot pictures. Already an experienced underwater diver and shooter, she possessed a crop of photographs that demonstrated a talent and a predisposition for narrative composition.

When I agreed to mentor her, to take up her interest and make it my cause, I imagined it would be an apprenticeship, teacher and student, and I would bestow upon her all of my useless knowledge on creative things, on looking at the world, on drive, being relevant, driven and successful. But that’s not what has happened. My car is running…

Life and teaching, mentoring and learning aren’t predictable paths. Organic mentoring is as much about learning for the teacher as it is about the student. It’s a love it and fuck it free for all, a pushing and shoving, pleading and fighting, tipping over and pulling back, laughing so hard you can’t breath, and crying at broken moments. At the core of all of this, for me, has been a kind of beautiful unfolding, a birth. Nothing of worth is born casually, and nothing worth loving comes without undoing something. Creativity, learning, friendship, fighting, challenging the lines and growing are all just love in different scenes. Love of the path, love of what’s possible.

I’ve got to get outside, it’s snowing and the car is running.

After a few tense words this evening, before I started the car, I came and found this photograph she took at a local zoo just a few months ago. When I see this, when I think about her eye and this moment, and our first conversation just a year ago, I’m reminded of why I’m here and what I’m doing. It’s no secret I guess, you’ve already figured it out I suppose, but as you can tell, my mentor has so much to teach me.

The car is running, guess I’ll turn it off and go to bed.

(©Robin Brigham)