One of my favorite scenic walks in South Portland has always been under the Casco Bay Bridge, a popular spot of many a fisherman seeking some semblance of seclusion. It's a location that my father and I return to as often as possible, especially striking during golden hour when the sun pierces the water that surrounds the shadows produced by the structure overhead.

When I finally returned here with my Minolta in hand, and a roll of black-and-white Fomapan 100 loaded, it was instead an incredibly foggy day and all the better for it. So much of the familiarity that I had previously associated with this place dissipated as soon as I entered the underpass. It was midday, and the most minor rays of sunlight still managed to escape through the smog; it was beautiful. It reminded me most of the film STALKER as well as the Grouper albums that I had been binging at the time.

The majority of the photos that I took when my Minolta was still up and running are from the Winter of early 2019, which was not a particularly happy time in my personal life. As conflicted as I was then, there's a certain fondness that I retain for many of the images that were born of that period; they reflect the turmoil, the solitude, the alienation and yet they also engage with the light that I was searching for. 

Further proof that, try as I might, I could never achieve fully realized miserablism.