Who could disagree with Heraclitus when he said, “No man ever steps in the same river
twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” (Incidentally, “steps” is
sometimes translated as ‘walks,’ but that sounds off to me. I mean who walks in a river?
Wade at best).
Anyway it seems to me that Heraclitus’s notion applies to streets as well as rivers, though judging by this picture, old H. found walking a bit of a strain. Scholars are reasonably sure that he suffered from dropsy.
Living as I do in small town Essex there’s a strictly limited number of nearby streets to walk down. Even so, by definition, and not just Heraclitus’, every street is different every time I walk down it, as am I. And I think you can say something similar about photography: you can’t photograph the same subject twice because the subject will have changed, as will the photographer.
There’s a certain street I walk down reasonably often and the first time I did it I was taken by this strange and interesting and rather attractive juxtaposition of plant life and dog statue.
A year or so later it looked like this.
I wasn’t sure what had happened to the plants but, as you see, snow was on the ground, and it did occur to me that the plant might have simply come to the end of it’s life or perhaps just receded for the winter. I suppose a better plantsman would be able to tell you the names of the absent plants.
And then, not so long ago, I walked down the street again and things had taken chaotic a turn – no snow, no plant, and a significant pile of rubbish. The dog, however, endures, for now.
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