the Time Traveler

the Time Traveler

Time is a circle, time is infinite, time waits for no man…

Many things considered as I worked on this one over the last three days, but ultimately, I thought that, despite the science fiction overtones, "the Time Traveler" fit best for the title, since it relates to everything I read while mulling this one over.

It started with the clock rising out of the mist, certainly a "dawn of time" or "birth of time" cue, which led me to read about the history of time pieces, the "invention" of time, and even the concept that time is an illusion. All those concepts could be assigned to this ambiguous piece. There was even some Nietszche in the image, with his quote about time being a circle, regarding his musings on eternal recurrence.

Ultimately, I decided that the connection we humans have to time is the centerpiece of it though, as we are certainly finite beings trapped in its infinite concept. We are ruled by it, we fear it, we long for it, and we learned how to measure it and prosper by doing so. We are as much its slaves as its inventor, or at least its knowing observers. We cannot escape it, and we can only feel one part of its three components. The past is a collection of memories, the future is a prediction or estimation based on the present, the only factor we can "know" and it is ever-changing and "now" is elusive a thought at best.

Thus, my human figure is a symbol of time personified, gears tattooed on his body, a finite being, a slave to the infinite concept of time, something ever present but out of reach. The ocean was a last minute addition - referencing the proverb "time and tide wait for no man," though the word "tide" was not referencing ocean ebbs and flows. Still, we perceived oceans to be limitless once, just as we perceive time to be limitless.

He, like all of us, are time travelers. We are at the center of it, we are in front of it, and we are behind it all at the same point in time. We are compelled to measure it, we are forced to acknowledge it, and most of us want more of it. Depending on your personal experience and mindset, this person is either traveling towards the future, looking back at the past, or perhaps between both - the beach being the land between the present and the past. In other words, what you don't see here is the fact that there is likely a representation of time - a clock - behind him as well as in front of him! I decided to remove the clock hands because with a vast concept like past/present/future, what time would be appropriate? Time, though the focus of this image, is meaningless here in the literal sense of the word.

Model: Ben

A Before and After version of this image will be available on my Facebook page and my website:

www.facebook.com/MichaelBilottaPhotography
www.michaelbilotta.com