ROBERT TAYLOR

摘要

There was a moment in Robert Taylor's childhood, as he was exploring the old family farmhouse built by his great grandparents in rural Mendocino County, California, when he discovered the seductive power of photography. He remembers gazing down into the bottom drawer of an antique chest where a hodgepodge of old photographs was stored. He became mesmerized by the faces of long-dead and long-forgotten relatives staring up from a drawer that reminded him of a coffin. "Memory is so inconstant, and change is so constant," he says. "The power of the photograph in the continuum of human life is profound. Some of these ancestors are now forever nameless. Not even their last link with human identity, the failing memory of my 90-year-old mother, can retrieve them."