Beemouse Laboratories

I was sifting through my photos tonight and found two version of the same house, the same view, taken almost exactly seven months apart. I really like that wall and its chimney.

Yellow house, May 2008

Yellow house, December 2008

And:

They remind me of this photo I also have a special feeling for. I took it while visiting family in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Yellow building, May 2008

Today I learned about the photographer Donald Weber and despaired due to his awesomeness. His photographic series on Chernobyl borders on devastating. Maybe I took a year of Russian in college to start me on my way towards Chernobyl. That place is so haunting and… Weber’s photography pokes me in places that words can’t reach.

Ever since I can remember I have been afraid of nuclear energy (bombs, reactors, even in sci-fi movies), and I wonder now if this is because of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. I would have been seven– definitely old enough to hear news and be scared.

Not that there weren’t enough reasons for me to be scared anyway… in my elementary school daycare we incessantly watched movies like Wargames and Project X and… hey, it seems weird that Matthew Broderick stars in both those movies. Maybe I’m actually afraid of him.

Seriously though– I don’t even know what I would do with photographs taken in Chernobyl. It would be such a responsibility. Everything I photograph now seems stupid in comparison to things that happen in that place… I guess everything probably seems pretty stupid when you pin it up next to loss like that, and death and terror.