Since I was little, I have been drawn to writing letters. Not quick notes, but actual letters, the kind that take time. I like to sit with the thought of the person I am writing to, to picture them opening the envelope, to choose my words slowly. There is something about a physical, handwritten letter that a message on a screen will never hold. It can be kept. It can be looked at again in ten years, or passed down through a family for generations.
My grandfather wrote my grandmother a small letter or note every single morning. She still has every one of them, even now, after he has passed. Each page is a small proof that he was thinking of her, written in his own hand, on that particular morning, at that particular time in their life together.
Someone very dear to me, who helped raise me through my teenage years and who I consider family, gave me even more of this love for the written word. After I moved out of home, he began writing to me several times a year, always multiple pages, always in his own handwriting. Every single time, it made me happy from the bottom of my heart, knowing that even while I was on the other side of the world, he took the time to sit down, put pen to paper, and send those words to find me. Every year around Christmas, I sit for hours going through every postcard and letter I have ever received. His letters are especially precious to me. They tell a personal story, and they carry me straight back to the exact moment in my life when they arrived.
This is why I started printing postcards from the 35mm film shots I take around home here in the Northern Rivers. Each image holds a moment and a view from my life, one you might stand in front of yourself one day. To take these photos, I slow right down. I take a breath, I focus, and I try to hold that moment still, forever, in a single frame.
Of course, they are printed on recycled paper, in keeping with everything we care about at DowerFina. But more than anything, I hope that at least some of these postcards will go on to carry words of their own. Words that someone takes the time to write, and words that someone, somewhere, keeps forever.