The real world is preconceived but not predestined, and therefore predetermined only in intention.
Perhaps we had it right playing dress up and make believe, credible in our confidence that the universe will accommodate the span of our imaginations.
We fantasize about the houses we wish to build, carefully arranging rooms in tudor dollhouses and pausing to refuel with imaginary tea.
Upon entering the real world, we endure a transition hardly qualified as a segue; one more like jumping into a swimming pool wearing a ball-gown.
Soaking wet with mascara running down our cheeks, our tendrils hang in soggy locks and all that glimmered of a Galliano gown now glistens in the icy cold.
A wishful princess becomes banished from a castle in the sky.
I choose to forgo this destiny because I don’t believe in a blanket identity of the real world. I never plan to grow up, I will never stop playing make believe, and without exception, I begin every day with a spirited game of dress up.
I fall in love and let my heart be broken, lose myself in romance novels and make lists of where I will venture in this world. Louise Erdich once said to “let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could”.
I am spending the weekend in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on a vacation with my father. We are playing board games and visiting museums, playing dress up in old clothing and behaving like we are ten years old.
At ten we believe the world has no limitations, and apparently, we must have had it right all along.
These images are from a railroad installation at the Pittsburgh Science Institute, a place I have frequented since the age of six. I once delighted in watching the trains circle on the tracks, and today I find myself musing to live within this world.
When depicted in my photographs, it is hard to draw a line between imagination and reality, which is clearly no place for a line to begin with.
