Marcia Mahoney
Infinite Pleasure
The photographs in this series capture ordinary life - its familiarity, beauty and ephemeral pleasure.
I was 16 years old the first time I made a picture like this. It was 1975, and a passing-period bottleneck halted progress up the stairwell of my small high school. Impatient, I stood with my textbooks pressed against my chest, watching the boys lope downward. One in class of 89 students, by the time I reached that stairwell, everything and everyone in the school was well known, and I chafed against sameness of our days.
In that instant, however, I was overcome by a desire to preserve the familiar before it washed into the flat sea of lost memory. Following the light from the window on the landing below to the well-known faces of the descending students, I closed my eyes tightly and made a mental picture. This experience spawned a lifelong practice of capturing the infinite pleasure of ordinary life.
Essayist Mary Jean Irion writes:
"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. ... Let me not pass you by in the quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return."