Geneva M. Torrey

2007-11-25 Dixfield Walkabout 024 A, originally uploaded by jessica_beagan.

Died entirely too young, aged 24. Infants that lived for only 9 days are tragic, of course, but there is something about young women dying young that arrests me. Like 24-year-old Geneva Torrey, or 16-year old Texanna Cox, or even 38-year old Mrs. Betsey Trask. What would their lives have been? Their children's lives? They were old enough to have grown up a bit, to have had so many promising years ahead of them.

I think about how my generation views long life as almost a given. We don't think about dying young. I was 29 before a friend my age died. A few generations ago, this would have been almost impossible.

And I think about myself at 16 or 24, and everything I wouldn't have gotten to do had I lived the same number of days as Geneva or Texanna. And I think about Betsey, and how much I have yet to do between now and age 38. It makes me want to remember these women, and live a little for them, for what they didn't get to do.

Or maybe I just spent too much time around dead Victorians, and picked up a little dead Victorian sentimentality. I do know that I'm a little different these days, a little more sentimental maybe. Since I moved home and surely because I am rapidly approaching 30, I'm aware of my own mortality all of a sudden. And I did lose a friend this year, whose wedding I photographed, who had a husband and sons and a calling to save sick pets and sick people.

I've never had to think about it before, that I'd run out of time some day. I know I've always been conscious of it on some level, knowing how driven I am to do as much as possible at all times. But things as big as the fact that you are going to die can and do manifest themselves in our consciousnesses in all sorts of myriad ways.

These photographs are one of them.

Maine was more than 10 years ago in my life. I've done a lot since then. And that's a lot of time. It's important that I go to Maine. It's where photography started, where "adulthood" started. And it was a long time ago, and it's impacted everything that's come after it.

Alright . . . . Back to photographs.