Ocean Vuong Instagram – Self-portrait on 18th birthday with borrowed Nikon, 2006.
Strange how I often glimpse a hidden, residual sadness in photographs once they cross the threshold of a decade from being taken. Could it be that distance itself creates a kind of longing, not to live again the years, however painful or joyous, but to do them in another way? Just once?
Here I am, hair cut by my mom, no poems written yet, with a camera lent to me by a friend to document his punk band that played in Connecticut basements. Why I was compelled to take this, I don’t know. Was I ever myself or merely a matrix of occurrences in one moment, and then yet another the next? Anyway, I want to hug you, wordless, younger Ocean, and I want it to mean nothing. Nothing at all. | Posted on 06/Jan/2024 22:00:26
