A Roll of Film in Early September

Petra- photographed with love, approved with a smile.

Where the simplest images return us to ourselves

Early September has its own heaviness. The rush of school mornings, the soft tyranny of kind weather — warm, almost too warm, while the calendar insists it is autumn. In these days I felt a small creative silence, as if ideas had deserted me. The best I could do was turn the camera on my own family, to photograph the most ordinary scenes, in the simplest way.

Petra and Lev — their secret tree, their shared kingdom.

On Friday I carried my camera to the schoolyard. My daughter ran to the tree she claims as her own — the secret tree she climbs with Lev after class. I photographed her there, caught between childhood and something else, higher up in the branches.

Sunday laundry day. no sheets, no plans, only the small republic of tired legs.

Two days later, a short drive to Weehawken. The evening was quiet, the river gray. I made a few frames. Nothing planned, nothing “important.”

And yet when I held the developed negatives in my hands, picked up from my lab in Chinatown, it felt like finding a lost letter from someone dear. So many photographs I wanted to keep. My family loved them; Petra has already chosen which ones to pin on her wall.

It is a strange joy — to be the photographer and also the client. To discover in my own pictures something that feels larger than intention.

This roll reminded me that sometimes the simplest images, made without ambition, can return us to ourselves.

On the bench in Weehawken: Papa, Alex, and his faithful Curious George who never leaves his side.