Change

All Images © 2010 Declan J. Dillon
Please do not use/reproduce without my explicit, written permission.

Change. The only constant in our world. The sole concept that never changes is, rather ironically, the fact that there will always be change. People change, environments change, objects change, but change does not change. Change defines the world in which we inhabit. Everything changes, and everything will continue to change, and there is no escaping that fact.

We tend to look at change as being either “good” or “bad.” Change is not as simple as the way we evaluate and explain it. As technologically advanced a population as we are, our minds are still not completely developed. Imagine how much we have progressed mentally since the time of the first humanoids. We should not assume that because we are the latest, most intelligent people to inhabit the earth, that we are the pinnacles of human evolution. We often forget that we are but a infinitesimal spec in time. We believe we are masters of a universe whose mere fringes we are only beginning to comprehend. Because we cannot possibly know whether change is truly “good” or “bad” on a universal scale, we examine it on an individual level, trying our hardest to prevent it or provoke it based upon our personal desires. As enticing as this may be, we need to learn to accept that change will always exist and cease attempting to control every aspect of our existence. There are things that we will likely never have the ability to control. Our perception of control is nothing more than an illusion that we have spun for ourselves, and it serves only to distract us from what we should be doing: broadening our understanding of our world, and the concept of change.

When change occurs, instead of panicking and attempting to prevent it, we should be investigating it on both personal and universal (or at least as close as we can come to universal) levels. We do not need to prevent change, instead, we need to preserve the memory of it. If we cannot suppress our yearning for control, then the least we can do is document the changes we encounter for those who will succeed us, so that they may take into account what we knew and experienced when forming their own worldviews.

Now here is where photography becomes relevant. Never has it been easier to record our world than now. With the prevalence of inexpensive, highly-accessible cameras (mainly in the form of the camera phone), anyone can be a historian, though many will simply choose to immortalize their friend’s naked keg stand for decades to come. Personally, I’ll stick to capturing the decaying rubbish that litters our fields and the sides of our roads, before it is swept away into landfills and lost forever.