The future lies behind you

The future lies behind you

The Aymara, an Indigenous people of South America, hold a radically different conception of time than we do. For them, the future lies behind us, while the past stretches out before us. When they speak about the past, they point forward. It has already happened and is therefore visible. The future, by contrast, remains unknown. It lies behind us, beyond our field of vision.

Remarkably, we constantly direct our gaze toward the future, even though we have no image of it whatsoever. The only way to gain any sense of the future is to look attentively at the past. After all, that was the future only a moment ago.

Still, I don't want to remain stuck in the past, or hold on anxiously to what is now. One way or another, I want to move forward. Though photography is a medium that always points to the past, it pushes me forward all the same. I feel a deep longing to create what does not yet exist, and try to trust that I'm heading in the right direction. It would, admittedly, be a lot easier if I could occasionally just glance around the corner.