Journey's End

Journey's End

I am always looking for an opportunity for a series of connected images, a hint of a storyline, a sequel, a trilogy, or a full series. Last year, I did a loose series of images called "the Red Balloons." But, that series was a series only in the sense that each image in it used red balloons as a symbolic metaphor, but little else connected them - a theme of lost innocence, perhaps.

Earlier this year, I did an image called "Is there Something I Should Know?" and then did a second one based on it, with the character in the first appearing in the second, called "Atlas' Shrugged."

Two weeks ago I completed one called "On The Road To Find Out" that took a long eight days to complete. I put a lot into it, and without going into an analysis of that piece here, it was based on the Cat Stevens song by the same name, about striking off to find yourself, to find answers, to find out where you belong, only to find that who you are is where you came from, back home.

And so, I found an opportunity here to make a part two of that journey with this one, using an older model who was dressed much the same way, with the same hat, the same walking stick, and shot while walking. Since these were two different models shout at two different times, with no thought as to what I would do with the raw material, this was a happy accident that I had the material to do this.

Our Journeyman is still searching for answers, still not willing to look back from where he started from. The strings leading back home in the first image have now become heavy, burdensome chains. The abundance of books and keys to unlock the answers when he set out have now come down to one of each, at the edge of the sea, in a barren place. Gone is the verdant greens from where he started from - there is only rock and ocean and a listless, bare patch of branches. The bright, beaming projector, memories of home that were carried on his head are now cast aside, the reels of memory all adrift in the waters. Even the sparrows that accompanied him on his journey in the beginning are down to one, and he is looking the other way, their kinship is at an end.

I added the zeppelins in for a couple reasons: firstly, because they looked a little ominous and they complimented the composition, but also to imply search vessels. Are they looking for answers too? Are they looking for the man who has lost himself? Perhaps they are just a symbol of a bygone era, passing into a setting sun, much like the man, who looks a little beaten down from all his travel. I also wanted them there to speak to the fact that even if we become more elaborate or sophisticated in our methods of discovery, the answers to the existential questions that plague us all are still elusive, no matter how old you become or how much you think you've learned.

The only thing that is still much the same as when he started is the waxing moon, the new moon, which hangs above his head, because it takes youth, real youth or a youthful mind, to keep wanting to learn, to reach, to strive for answers and expansion, when all around you there is nothing but seeming emptiness and riddles.

I had a lot of fun doing this one, and it only took two days this time, but the satisfaction I feel or this piece is a little deeper than for the first one, since this speaks to where I am at personally more than the first one. I happen to be somewhere between the ages of the first model and the second one, and though I am not yet what some consider old, I do feel like my time for searching for self identity is coming to a close, and I realize more and more that no matter what lofty plans I had or still have for reinvention, I am still very much the same as I was when I was a boy, on the road to find out.

Perhaps the Journey's End that I refer to is not this man's journey in particular, but the inner journey that begins with questions, and ends with self-acceptance.

A Before and After version of this image can be seen on my Facebook page at: www.Facebook.com/MichaelBilottaPhotography

Model: Ed Barron