Photography

A spring state of mind

April 18, 2021

DC’s cherry blossom trees are the definition of a gift that keeps on giving. When the mayor of Tokyo gifted 3,000 trees to the US capitol over a century ago, he was really giving us the centerpiece for a celebration. As people gather around cherry trees in places across Japan, China, and other lucky parts of the world, in DC, people pour into the parks and along the Potomac River for a festival to welcome Spring.

My first Spring in DC, I missed the festivities. The blooms opened just a few weeks after the pandemic began. I checked the “cherry blossom cam” on my computer to see a hazy arial livestream. Underwhelming, to say the least. This year, when the blossoms arrived, it was as if for a week we could see the world through rose-tinted glasses: the pandemic reality faded behind the lens of Spring’s signature hopefulness. I joined other (mostly masked) people coming out to celebrate under flowering magnolias, dogwood, and ornamental cherry trees.

Despite our annual anticipation, the cherry trees often manage to pull off a surprise. This year, a warmer-than-expected week led the trees to jump into bloom early, reaching a peak a full week ahead of predictions. In fact, we never even recognize “peak bloom” — the time arborists declare that 70% of the blossoms are open—until after it’s past, and only a few days till the flowers are on their way out. We might not be experts at forecasting them, but we’re the reason they keep making their entrance earlier — and why they could easily become endangered.

As climate change continues to get worse, shrinking spring, the cherry blossoms come sooner. Their arrival signals not only new life, but also the existential threat facing life on earth. Our increasingly early celebration of the trees — just like our pleasure on an unseasonably warm day or our joy at an unexpected snow — doesn’t account for the full story. In much the same way, as we celebrate the U.S. vaccine rollout in the midst of Spring, we must remember that suffering continues, that scars remain.

Given this bleak picture, what do we make of the cherry blossoms and their week-long glory? Perhaps the trees’ short showcase remind us that we’re not supposed to wear Spring’s rose-colored glasses forever. And yet cherry blossom-lenses are nonetheless precious. They help us see the worn-down world not as it is, but as it should be— a vision we desperately need as we work towards collective recovery. Ever the gift, cherry blossom trees offer a window into a world where we can, and should, celebrate — even as it is being made true.

Photography Nature, Photography, Seasons

Our winter within

Sarah Holcomb

February 4, 2021

The great Valentine’s Day snow of 2004 is legendary in Central Texas. My sister and I spent the day gargling snow and making angels in our Walmart windbreakers. It all seemed unreal, a dream. A decade later, the Midwest taught me how to actually weather Winter. When the temperature dropped to negative 32 degrees one year, my friends threw fists of water into the air to watch it freeze. I learned how to cope with the cold. But I hadn’t learned to live with the Winter within.

This year many were experiencing Winter long before the first frost. Winter is marked by loss, as light and time grow less, and emptiness, as the landscape grows leaner. As I look out at bare-boned trees, I too feel fragile and exposed. Loss is lodged inside me. My great uncle died from Covid-19 two weeks ago. The month before, I attended my grandfather’s funeral service. In 2020, the deadliest year of my lifetime, millions lost their lives and livelihoods. We are in the thick of Winter.

I am trying to name the loss, to lament. I’m learning that the soul’s Winter is not about overcoming sadness, but acknowledging it. Fall and Spring are for transition, but Winter is for sitting at the lowest point. Winter is for being. We wait. We rest under the weight. This is not the dreamy Winter of my childhood, but a harsh and honest one.

It’s into the emptiness of winter that snow makes its grand entrance. For the last three days, everything has been glowing. Millions of snowflakes fuse together to protect our eyes from the bareness and replace a sense of absence with abundance. In a season of loss, snow not only brings joy, but feels to me like a promise: that the hollows within us and among us will someday be filled.

Photography Photography, Reflections

Listening to the leaves: A photo story

Sarah Holcomb

November 15, 2020

For years, I figured Fall was part fiction. The reds and golds had to be exaggerated in books — I had never seen such a colorful landscape for myself. We were used to a subtle shift of seasons in central Texas, where little changes visibly besides the grass quietly browning. The temperatures fluctuate between hot and cool until, before you know it, we’re almost to Christmas and the cool days outnumber the warm ones. It’s a slow fade that barely registers until it’s past.

My first Fall up north, I was entranced. Here on the east coast, Fall announces itself. Nearly every tree reads aloud the story of transition. I’m drawn into the ritual of it all— a two-month ceremony where colors explode, then fade as the days shrink and the air cools.

In 2020, Fall hits differently. These days, both time and change are sore subjects. We avoid dwelling on how long it’s been since the pandemic devastated our world. November’s surge in Covid-19 cases looks much like the one we experienced six months ago. In this unpredictable world, change happens so rapidly it feels impossible to keep up. Plans are pointless. Calendars are little use.

Yet I find myself drawn to Fall more than ever before. When the tree tips began to yellow, I saved leaves and took photos to document the transformation. Maybe watching nature change in front of us helps us reclaim our own relationship to time. We can see that time comes around. Fall lets us stand on the edge of the arc, watching it slowly bend. The trees tell us a story of loss. But it is also a story of renewal. So I gather up leaves to press between newspaper under stacks of books in our increasingly chilly basement. And some day —as the arc of time bends— I will peel them off the headlines and remember how they helped me to hope.

Photography

My Father’s Farm: A photo story

Sarah Holcomb

June 21, 2020

My father grew up on a farm bordering the Guadalupe river in Seguin, Texas, 70 miles south of my family’s home in the Austin suburbs. It’s not his farm, really, as he’s quick to remind me. His mother, the daughter of German immigrants, grew up on the same land, which her father used for crops and cattle. After her own parents had passed away, my grandmom, a schoolteacher and single mom, moved back and brought up her two sons in the house her father built. Growing up, I knew it as “the farm” — a favorite subject for stories my dad told my sister and me. Stories about the goats he raised, which he showed off and sold off at 4-H competitions. Stories about a skunk in the cornfields that sprayed him so badly he had to have multiple tomato baths, or the skunk under his closet that soaked all his clothes in a stench that wouldn’t seem to wash out.

My dad is an accountant, and he’s good at it. Very good, actually. He’s exactly the kind of person you would want managing your finances. Doesn’t miss a detail. Knows all the rules and follows them to the letter. He keeps track of a company’s taxes with the same care he applies to just about everything. He trims back the old oak trees at just the right angle, keeps the grass neatly cropped, always has an eye on the gas tank, never speeds, checks his vision on an eye chart, checks in with his daughters frequently, and checks back on his childhood home to make sure everything is just as it should be.

Periodically he’d take all of us to go scope out the farm. In the fall, we’d spend at least a full day or two bent over beneath the trees, picking pecans, and head home with pounds on pounds of nuts. Then we’d set up shop on beach towels in the living room: my dad cracking them open, my sister, mom, and I scraping out the shells. Few things make my dad more excited than a new useful “toy” or tool for the farm, like a top-of-the-line nutcracker. Or “snake guards” to protect our shins. Later on, a riding lawn mower. And most recently, a ATV to ride around the property.

We gave the ATV a whirl last December, when the four of us were all together for Christmas and drove out to the farm one Saturday. My parents have been heading to the farm a lot lately. After years of renting out the place, my dad and his brother have decided to renovate it and spend more time out there themselves. My parents gave me the house tour: there’s new paint, restored floors, and it’s slowly being furnished. My mom brought paintings and curtains to put up. I trailed along, bringing my camera to capture what I could. I had forgotten how big and blue the Texas sky is, the how wide open the land, and the odd, yet endearing, layout of the house. I was learning to see it in new ways, too, through my father’s eyes, imagining what the place looked like a generation ago.

A place can reveal a great deal about a person, especially when you see a person in their place. The farm brings out a certain joy in my dad, who is always eager for an adventure around the property. Following my father around the farm—inspecting the house, barrelling over the grounds in the ATV, swinging over barbed wire, and looking out at the Guadalupe, it sometimes felt like I was staring into his portrait. So I’ve pulled a few photos from that day as a sort of tribute to a quiet man who always cares about getting it right, whether or not anyone cares to notice. Happy Father’s Day.

Photography Art, Justice, Protest

Change is still in the air and in the streets

Sarah Holcomb

June 20, 2020

Four weeks after people began pouring into the streets to protest George Floyd’s murder and the systemic racism in our country, the marches continue on. And the fence erected outside the White House—now a memorial filled with protest art—continues to serve as a powerful symbol: a symbol of solidarity among Americans, and a symbol of the divide between the President and the people.

On the heels of vibrant Juneteenth celebrations and demonstrations, as well as the burning of a confederate statue in the District yesterday, today the crowds were smaller, especially as thunder came and the skies opened. Still, they were there. Around noon, hundreds of bikers wearing black shut down traffic as they pedaled from Arlington to the Lincoln memorial, and on to Lafayette Square. Onlookers raised their fists in solidarity, and drivers coming over the bridge joined in with their horns.

Outside the White House, families walked around to look at the signs and pictures hung as a tribute to the countless black Americans who have been killed by police. The dynamic, ever-present demonstrations show that the movement has not died down— and remind us of the change that is happening in cities and states across the country as a direct result of people rising up.

Photography Photography, Protest

Peaceful protestors flood D.C.: a photo story

Sarah Holcomb

June 7, 2020

With public outrage over racism and police brutality past a boiling point, peaceful protestors are marching in over 700 U.S. cities and around the world, even amidst a global pandemic. Today over 10,000 masked protestors marched in Washington D.C., chanting “Black lives matter,” “No justice, no peace,” “Hands up, don’t shoot!” and “Hey hey, ho ho, these racist cops have got to go!”

The atmosphere in the District on the humid, 90-degree day, felt far different than earlier this week. Gone were the imposing officers in riot gear. Law enforcement was sparse, keeping a distance from the protests. As we passed groups of often unarmed guards leaning up against humvees, block after block my friends and I received grins and a scripted greeting — “Hi, how are you?” National Guard troops talked among each other; one group was demolishing a stack of Domino’s pizzas. The scene stood in stark contrast to Trump’s earlier wish to deploy 10,000 troops to quell the protests in D.C. Meanwhile, the tall black gates erected around the White House and various markers remained.

As marches happened all around the city to protest the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and countless others, people continued packing 16th Street NW outside the fenced-in White House, where Mayor Bowser’s instantly-famous street mural reads “BLACK LIVES MATTER” in bright yellow letters. Along the streets, volunteers dispensed hand sanitizer, water bottles, and snacks. Shadowed by the buildings representing our nation’s most powerful political institutions, protestors demanded for justice and equality to become a reality — not just words inscribed on their walls.

Here’s a glimpse from my experience participating in a protest on Saturday, June 6.

Photography Photography

The White House, Barricaded: Scenes surrounding the “fortress”

Sarah Holcomb

June 4, 2020

After law enforcement forcefully removed peaceful protestors from Lafayette Square for a Trump photo op on Monday, June 1, the security perimeter around the White House began expanding. Tuesday morning, a tall fence went up on the north side of Lafayette square. A barricade of guards—including federal police officers in riot gear and no identifiable markings—pushed back another block.

The White House is currently, in effect, a fortress. (Some have compared it to a prison, or a compound). Trump has since threatened to use military force against the people protesting the senseless death of George Floyd —and countless other black Americans—at the hands of police. On Wednesday morning, I watched as D.C. residents biked or ran past heavily armed officers while newscasters recorded dispatches and an out-of-town couple blasted Christian worship music. Some graffiti remained, including on the Department of Treasury building, and businesses stayed boarded. Besides a bit of buzz around the barricade, downtown remained eerily empty, though a few activities seemed nearly normal — men in bandanas planted begonias, and boarded-up establishments opened for business.

Here’s an early-morning glimpse blocks from the White House, on June 3, 2020.