telos

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Last winter, I started hating my commute. The combination of early darkness and gloomy skies seemed both oppressive and depressive. In that state of mind, it occurred to me that there might be a photo project buried in all that negativity. Coming home late one evening, I began to notice how visually interesting the nighttime freeway could be. The isolation in my own car, the darkness, the blurry ambiguity of passing structures – all these things stimulated a feeling of being unattached while caught up in a flow over which I had very little control. I know a metaphor when I see one. And this proved to be the germinating idea for this project.

Why is ‘telos’ the title of this series? One of the feelings that I was trying to capture was the sense of inevitability, the feeling of being swept up in a flow toward some unseen destination. I was familiar with the word teleology, and it seemed related in some way to what I was feeling. This belief that events occur because they have some ultimate purpose or goal, and that past events have been ‘designed’ to get us to our present location is a strong comforting impulse that seems to underlie virtually every belief system in the world. It is fate, or destiny, or karma, to put it simply. I’m not so sure I buy into that notion, but I am certainly aware of the strong attraction this idea has on us humans. When I began to look into the origins of this word, I found something interesting. The idea is originally a greek philosophical concept, but the latin language has a similar word, telum, that is used to describe a javelin or object that is thrown toward a target. It seemed pretty clear that there was some correspondence in meaning. But what was really interesting is that there is another latin word, tela, that means a web. This etymological ambiguity just seemed too perfect to pass up. Are we a javelin hurled toward some distant target, or are we caught in a web? I think these photos may pose the question, but I am not sure they provide any concrete answer.