In Borrowed Light

In Borrowed Light is my version of Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment”: you plan, you’re smart, you are in luck if you catch it & then its over & before you know it you are like Orpheus leading Eurydice or Antinous out of the underworld, in borrowed light, trying not to look back. -MJO 2020 “Now eyes are closer to the bone & luminous; Lives are closer to the bone & luminous. I hear voices saying, ‘Look for me’ -but where?” - MJO, Times Square c.2020 Loss, longing, transformation, discovery- so many intertwined legends; this ongoing series is based on my reaction to living through decades of the AIDS crisis while people disappeared, leaving almost no time to grieve. These photographs are inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphosis: The Fall of Icarus, Apollo and Hyacinthus (“You should have lived forever in my sight, your life well-earned…” -Book X) as well as the writings of Cavafy (Before Time Changed Them) and the songs of David Bowie (Rebel, Rebel). The photographs are combined with texts from writers who have influenced me as well words of my own. The photographs are a combination of analog, and digital processing. All are in an edition of 5 (+2AP). “I never found them again-all lost so quickly…the poetic eyes, the pale face…in the darkening street” -C. P. Cavafy, Days of 1903