Winter evenings like this… (Stone Street, New York City) (at New York, New York)

Autumn 🍂 East Village, New York City (at New York, New York)

Dusk is the echo between night and day… (Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York City) (at New York, New York)

Winter snowstorm. New York City. The best. (at New York, New York)

Last embers of Autumn 🍂 (Central Park, New York City) (at New York, New York)

I have started to refer to this time of year as the season of ubi sunt.

Many medieval latin poems start with the phrase: Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? which translates to: Where are those who were before us?

The ubi sunt motif is a powerful vehicle for nostalgic meditations on mortality and the ephemeral quality of existence. It’s also used throughout several beautiful Anglo-Saxon poems like The Wanderer, a poem which I read and analyzed during a medieval literature course that had an enormous impact on my writing.

I look at this photo and I remember standing on the Williamsburg Bridge with the brisk wind whipping past my face and I remembered that I was specifically thinking about a beautiful short film vignette of photographer Sarah Moon talking about the artistic process:

“Time goes by. Light falls. I lose confidence. I don’t want to be a photographer anymore…

Then, all of a sudden, but not always, something changes, I can’t say why, maybe I’m just in the right place at the right time, or maybe I believe in it.

However, for a split second, I see a sparkle of beauty passing by, everything goes so quickly now within that stillness, and I’m carried away, and at last I like what I see, and I can’t stop finding it, then losing it, and all day long I keep on, because it once existed.“

It’s the season of ubi sunt.

(Williamsburg Bridge, New York City) (at New York, New York)

Staple Street, New York City (at New York, New York)

Autumn. 🍂🍁Central Park, New York City (at New York, New York)

Brooklyn: taking Autumn to the next level since forever. (at New York, New York)