A Light in the Darkness: the Blazing Comet Neowise

Although the year 2020 will forever go down in our collective memory as a year of loss, infamy, and conflict, I believe the time spent in what I like to call “fertile isolation” has yielded gifts as well. One of my favorite moments to look back on was when the comet Neowise unexpectedly rose up before us as we were driving on an empty road in the middle of the Californian wilderness. As it was relatively visible with the naked eye, we parked the car by the side of the road, turned off the headlights, and decided it was time to try my hand at astrophotography.

Astrophotography is a tricky genre: in order to capture the light of the stars, the camera has to be put on a tripod and the shutter has to remain open for 15 to 20 seconds long! Too long, however, and you will end up with a blurry photo, because your camera will then actually record the movement of the stars (or the movement of the earth relative to the stars to be exact!).

I do like to photograph the occasional landscape, but I am much more interested in people (and other moving, breathing subjects that can communicate with me in different ways). Having successfully photographed the comet, the scene instantly evoked visions of David Lynch’s Lost Highway: a highway that takes you into alternative dimensions, warbled time frames, synchronous identities… So I asked my partner to double for Patricia Arquette and invited her to step into the frame.

The comet appearing at the end of the highway, at the zenith of summer, symbolized for me the many questions we have all been struggling with during this pandemic: where are we heading? Are there any signs on the horizon? And, of course, considering that this phenomenon only occurs once every 6,800 years, how do our actions today impact the future?