Dear Ivan,

Incipient age indeed. Maybe we should measure our age not in years and the expectancies that come along with them but in the frequency of irreversible things happening to our bodies and minds. The little resignations we make along the way, subconsciously stacking one on top of another until suddenly we realise and wonder.

This year was one of them. Three physical defects. On three separate occasions a physician told me there wasn’t much else to do but to accept. A too early decay. Nothing life-altering or threatening, but large enough to have to make adjustments.

It would be fascinating to x-ray an entire mountain. I picture a mountain like a head, the quarry like a mouth, the marble like a chipped tooth. Surveyors have had a difficult time estimating the remaining marble left inside the Carrara mountain because of all the rubble, but estimate that at the current rate of approximately a million tonnes cut away every year, there still is marble left for several centuries to come.

And of course your fig leaf makes me wonder what’s behind it. Fig leafs block our views, but only metaphorically  because we feel the urgency to know what lies ahead. But having a perfect view of our future won’t calm us. It’ll only make us want to change that path. We’ll never be content.

Maybe it’s the general attitude of walking towards instead of walking away  that resonates. Again, the difficult balance between history, present and future, or memory, feeling and hope. Who we are and who we want to be, and how desperately we cling on to the images we have of ourselves, the paths we want for ourselves.

The changing of a season. Accepting myself, not as perfect as I imagined, having turned my lensless eye on myself. Walking.

/// #image_by_image is an ongoing conversation between photographers Ivan Sigal and Anton Kusters. @ivansigal and @antonkusters on Instagram ///