I used to pay a lot of attention to photography. Not just the practice of photography (you know, shooting photos and all that), but photography as a craft and art form. Then, for a lot of reasons, I stopped doing that. For a few years, I just wasn’t interested in photography. I shot occasional photos with my cellphone and that was enough. But a few months ago I picked up one of my old cameras and…hey, guess what. My interest in photography was resurrected.

I started thinking about photography again. I started reading articles about photography again, and studying other photographers again. In doing so, I came across an article that suggested looking at your old photos as if they were made by a different person. I’ve never really bothered to look at my old photos. I saw them when I took them and again when I processed them; why look again? But I thought, “Well, what the hell, I might as well try that.” And I did. I picked an old photo and studied it (and wrote about it here). Now I’m doing it again.

Here’s a thing I learned the last time I did this: looking at old photos–and I mean actively looking at them, not just thumbing through them quickly–is weird. It’s sort of dissociative. At least it is for me. It turns out there’s two or three things going on at the same time. You 1) look at the photo as a photo, an object in its own right. But you also 2) consider what was happening in the world around you when you shot that photo. And 3) you remember why you shot the photo.

This photo was shot on a Sunday evening, at 6:59 PM on the 7th of August, 2011. It was shot at a hospice facility for veterans, where my brother Jesse Eugene was dying from pancreatic cancer. I visited him almost daily during his stay. On that particular day, I’d wheeled his bony ass out to this small enclosed porch so he could look at some trees and feel some sunshine. He stayed in his wheelchair, I sat on the bench. We didn’t talk much. I think the trees and sunshine meant more to me than to him. He may have been humoring me when I suggested visiting the porch. We were only out there a short time before he said he was tired and wanted to return to his room.

I remember wanting to shoot his photo while we were out there; the light was amazing. But he looked awful–the cancer had pretty much ravaged him–and I knew he wouldn’t want his photo taken like that. After I got him back in his bed and comfortable, I scurried back to the porch and took this photo, catching the last little bits of that delicious sunlight.

He died a few days later. This may have been the last time he left his hospice room. I think it was. It’s possible somebody else might have wheeled him out to that porch, but I don’t think so. At the time, it never occurred to me that he might never get to sit in the sunlight again.

Here’s a weird thing. I knew he was dying, but I can’t remember ever thinking something like, “This will be the last time he ever eats black-eyed peas” or “He’ll never get to hear this song again.” I take that back; I vividly recall bringing his dog to visit, knowing it would be the last time he got to hold and hug his little buddy. That was pretty crushing. But that was unusual; mostly I always thought there’ll be at least one more day. But, of course, eventually there wasn’t.

Here’s another weird thing–an uncomfortable weird thing. There’s a selfish part of me that wants this to have been taken on the last day Jesse Eugene sat in sunshine. Why? Because it would give the photo more emotional weight. That complicates my thoughts about this photograph. I have to wonder if my memory is reliable. It’s entirely possible I’m remembering this as the last time my brother sat in sunlight because I want to remember it that way.

Without all that context, I think it’s a pretty good photo. The light is sweet, that yellow bench is an absolute treat, the hint of flowers in the left of the frame is a nice touch. The last rays of sunlight give the photo a sentimental quality that, I hope, isn’t entirely sappy.

I’m still uncomfortable with this idea of examining an old photo of mine, but I’m willing to consider there may be some value in it. I’ll probably do it again in a month or so.