There's a Bucks Pond Road in the State of Illinois, but it's not that important. Or maybe there's a Bucks Pond Road in each of us. Or at least, there should be. A road where to walk, where to get lost. Where to feel loneliness, if it's something we can still feel.

© Tim Carpenter from the series 'Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road'

Perhaps this is the synthesis, albeit extreme, of the latest book by Tim Carpenter. An author who shows through his images the importance of relations with space, rather than space itself. Thus, somehow, the reality is not subjectivized by a process of description, narration, or interpretation. None of this. The landscape is a canvas in which a mental state of being is objectified. This approach is made evident by the same author in a recent conversation of ours when he argues: «Making photographs is all about creating relationships that don’t exist in the real world, while getting to use subject matter that clearly does exist in the real world. With cameras and lenses, we can do all sorts of things with both space and time to bring about unique pictorial associations between the things that ended up in the viewfinder or ground glass. And those relations are for me the only real way to start to understand what another human being is trying to tell me in a photograph. Which is another way of saying that form manifests a unique sensibility, a self. The motif tells me what the maker knows, the picture tells me how the maker is.»

© Tim Carpenter from the series 'Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road'

Then there is winter, which accentuates all this. The trees are bare, the vegetation appears sparse and timid. This is the time of year when nature, metaphorically, lets itself be looked inside. And that's what the person who seeks solitude usually does as a way for introspection. And walking into nature, which is a walk within "our being in the world", is aimed precisely at this. Walking on one's own does not presuppose a goal. It is the very act of walking that has meaning. And the same method applies to Carpenter's photography, as mentioned above.  Otherwise, walking together with people requires a destination (not necessarily geographically). In ancient times before reaching their destination pilgrims were required to walk for long journeys through often inaccessible and isolated places. Their journey was therefore also a journey of purification.

© Tim Carpenter from the series 'Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road'

Walking on a soft bed of wet leaves makes each step different from the other. In the forest, each pace has a different meaning, and walking becomes less obvious. It is as if we were giving importance to every single heartbeat. Walking in nature, therefore, predisposes us to an "interior listening", to those silent voices... On a paved road, this is much more difficult. Every step sounds like another. In many photographs, civilization appears through barely perceptible anthropized signs. It almost seems to accentuate the resilience of modernity. The difficulty in proceeding without it.

© Tim Carpenter from the series 'Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road'

© Tim Carpenter from the series 'Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road'

Finally, there is a reminder of Christmas day. A day in which one is rarely alone. A day when trees are decorated according to ancient paganism. Some suggest that perhaps this archaic ritual has been reduced to a feast of high-calorie consumption. It doesn't matter here. Carpenter from the title of the book takes us back to a mystical dimension of the relationship with nature. And he does it by returning us a dignity made of silence and gray tones. His is undoubtedly a contemplative vision. Somehow sacred.

© Still image of the book 'Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road'

© Still image of the book 'Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road'

© Still image of the book 'Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road'

© Still image of the book 'Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road'

© Still image of the book 'Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road'

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LINKS
Tim Carpenter
Interview with Tim Carpenter (2018)
Book 'Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road', Ice Plant, 2019