Photographer's Log Photographer's Log

Generations Past
Belle Road, early Autumn 2006. This massive old barn always seems to be either somber in its duties or falling to sleep in its contemplations of days gone by. On this day, as I drove past, one unusual spark of brightness caught my eye, drawing me into the story of this still working but very old farm building. The sunlight glowing into the room behind that one solitary window seemed to beckon me into its consciousness, as though for a few minutes the building needed to show me it still lived, still quietly breathed, remembered the sounds, the smells, the touch of all the generations of people and animals who have used it through it’s lifetime. For a few minutes it seemed to expose itself not as a cold sleeping building but as a structure with a responsive glowing heart filled with the warmth of ages of memories.

Gazing through that golden window I found myself imagining the goings-on that might have taken place in that barn. All of a sudden I could feel myself as though a youngster on a warm Autumn afternoon working inside, doing chores, pausing a while to sit on a hay bale or stool in the radiant caress of that sunlight which was brightly shining into my eyes, listening to flies buzzing, smelling the sweet muskiness of hay, hearing the loud clopping of an animal’s hoof upon the wooden floor, the creak of the door gently moving loosely on it’s hinge, barely feeling a stray warm breath of a breeze moving through the building. I can feel the sunbeams dancing over the tips of my eyelashes and brushing my face like a brusquely loving mother’s hands that leave me knowing my world is safe and day-to-day, and filled with loving kindness.

And then the sunlight is gone and I am an old woman in a car outside that barn, beyond the world of conjured memories within the great fading red giant. He has closed the door to his heart and our moment of shared reverie is extinguished with the sun. Old memories. It’s. Mine. Mingled briefly, yet permanently.-June Mohan
Photos: (Copyright Mohan 2006) To contact the artist, please send email to: junemohan@hotmail.com.