During our stay in Dubai I lost the memory card that contains all of our photos from Italy, the end of our time in Switzerland and most of Dubai. More than 2000 photos... It was the only SD-card that hadn't been backed up :( This photo of the fountains at Dubai Mall was one the first images taken on the new card I was replacing the old one with when it was lost.
The photos are gone. And I am feeling the loss so deeply right now :
I am acutely aware that it is an insignificant loss in the grand picture of things; in comparison to all of the true loss in the world. But I was numb with grief for the first day. T held strong in his belief that we would get it back and I am greatful for his efforts.
I couldn't write this post earlier; 3 days have passed and I'm sitting on a plane flying from Singapore to Bali in Indonesia. And there are still tears. Just now the realisation that most of the photos from our visit to the Casa dei Bambini in Rome are on that card brought a new round of hot tears that fell silently but probably not invisibly to the poor Japanese woman sitting next to L and I. Sigh.
And I've been thinking about the word 'composition' and how photography parallels the composition of a poem or a piece of music - not every photo of course; there will always be those beautiful serendipitous snapshots and flawed grabs - but in many ways I feel that I massaged and composed a great deal of those photos into existence. That it is like losing 2000 little poems. I think that is partly what I'm grieving - that I can't ever share them now. On travels that haven't always been easy (but also magestic and breathtaking in so many ways) documenting our days has been my personal-space, my escape and my creative outlet. What was captured and given physical form now exists only in my mind...
