The Weight of the Air

There is a peculiar physics to the way we occupy space. We tend to think of the ground as a permanent contract, a solid promise that we will remain tethered to the earth. Yet, there are those who negotiate with gravity as if it were merely a suggestion. I think of the steeplejack, the window washer, or the painter perched on a ladder that seems to lean against nothing but thin air. They exist in a state of suspended animation, a vertical solitude that the rest of us, safely anchored to the sidewalk, rarely contemplate. It is a quiet, rhythmic labor, performed in the slipstream of the wind, where the only thing keeping one from the pull of the world below is a steady hand and a singular focus. We look up and see a silhouette against the sky, a small, defiant mark on the vastness of the horizon. What does it feel like to be that far from the familiar, to find a sense of home in the middle of the climb? Is the air thinner there, or is it just the silence that changes?

Aleksey Kogan has captured this exact feeling of suspension in his image titled Working at Height. It is a quiet testament to the grace found in the most precarious of places. Does it make you wonder what it feels like to stand where the ground is only a memory?