The Weight of Years

We carry our history in the skin. It is a map of places we have walked and the weather we have endured. In the north, the frost leaves lines on the earth, and time leaves lines on the face. There is a silence that comes with age, a quietness that is not an absence of sound, but a gathering of it. We spend our youth trying to be heard, shouting into the wind, hoping the world will turn its head. Then, the wind dies down. We stop asking for attention. We simply exist, like a stone in a field or a tree that has survived another winter. The stories are still there, held behind the eyes, but they no longer need to be told to be true. What remains is the dignity of having lasted. What is left when the noise finally stops?

Andres Martinoli has captured this stillness in his work titled Old Age in the Field. The face in the frame holds a geography of its own. Does it remind you of anyone you have known?