If you have ever stopped to read a historical marker by the side of the road – “So-and-so lived here”; “So-and-so crossed the river here” – you will understand the impulse behind the 18 photographs in Vital Signs.
Why was the plaque erected and why does anyone go to look at it? The answer is not in the information on the marker -- those details can be found elsewhere -- but in the fact that the person’s deed happened there. The marker distinguishes the location as bearing its trace.
Human presence infuses the world in ways that go unnoticed. That is what these photographs signify. Each is a historical marker of something ordinary. There are no people in them but there is evidence. Evidence that people inhabited a place, visited or were visited, played or mourned, prayed, suffered, left a message, sat with a friend, abandoned something, beautified something or tried to put their house in order.
Absence animates these images as much as any human form could.