Out of Place

February 3, 2005

There are a few things I don't associate as rightly belonging in the world. There existence seems so awkward, so troubling, that I believe them to be misplaced in the temporal and corporeal stream. Giraffes are a good example. 

My father periodically would talk about great figures of the past who were not, "of their time." Which I believe to mean that they may have fit in wonderfully in the future or the past, but the present epoch cannot possibly meet their capacities. Many of them are branded as geniuses, or spiritual leaders, but I suspect that we've all met people who seem dramatically out of place in their own culture who will never be given a glorifying plinth in the the annuals of history. For every William Blake there are countless other visionaries, dreamers, healers, and artists who will struggle with difference in an indifferent world.

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On this same February field trip to the zoo I turned the Photo Phazer away from the animals to document how people were interacting. I found the following photo to be one of the more telling images I took in 2005: