It seems to me the first death occurs when someone stops learning. Every time, I see George, he teaches me something new. He has taught me to think about my pictures. At the parade, he taught me to focus on one thing and not try and capture everything. He is teaching me  how to compose photos more thoughtfully. My photography instructor Christine Glade is teaching me how to use my fancy camera and also how to understand light and shutter speed.

Watching George in his darkroom, I am struck by his process of taking a photo and mine. I will never know the particular thrill and almost spiritual challenge of mixing chemicals, working in darkness and seeing an image crystallize on paper that will soon be unavailable anywhere. I’m not sure I could deal with his process, I do not really have the patience for it, and it is not really what I do. But it is thrilling to see it.

I see people all around me who seem to have stopped learning – people who are always on the left, or always on the right.  People who are angry and who complain about their lives. People who tell me how to live and who are sure they  know what their dogs are thinking. People who tell me I need a million dollars in the bank to grow old in America. People who tell me there is no other way to be healthy than to stuff my life with pills and tests. As I move through life, I understand every day how little I know, how much I have to learn, how eager I am to learn what I can. And to be wary of people who are certain of things. They don’t know the most important thing – there is nothing you can’t learn from.

George is always learning about photography, always willing to teach, and his is the kind of creativity that you can learn from just being around. He teaches me also how to be accepting of life. To be generous.  George does not complain about the changes in photography that threatened to marginalize him. About the bad luck  – the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers – that torpedoed years of brilliant work photographing New York cityscapes. His world collapsed, but he has found a new world to take photos of.