A practiced eye for accidental grace

Time passes, as does the memory of Timm. Yesterday was the first death-date anniversary – seven months gone – that completely missed my notice. I didn’t even think of it until checking my e-mail this morning to find a note from my mother:

Can it be just 7 months? or is it 7 years? My life hasn't returned to "normal" whatever that is. A new normal, perhaps, that is so different. I feel that I have aged years in the process and have lost much strength in the process. Physically, I am not the same. I appreciate your being available when the process seems endless and always painful. You understand, because so it with you, I think.

I think so ... not quite the same, your way, nor quite the same my own: different. "A new normal" yes: one that carries this great weight in its lower heart, a fullness which is present and lost, a grief which gives clarity and depth to the next event.

She adds,

I have been reading a book I brought back from Timm's, Prayer by Philip Yancey. Timm has underlined, written comments, questions all over the pages. Recently, I read something made me smile:

"A rabbi taught that experiences of God can never be planned or achieved. "They are spontaneous moments of grace, almost accidental." His student asked, "Rabbi, if God-realization is just accidental, why do we work so hard doing all these spiritual practices?" The rabbi replied, "To be as accident-prone as possible."

Timm marked this paragraph and ended it with "!!"

I think he identified with the rabbi's response.

As one who also knows of Timm’s accident-prone nature, I read that with both bemusement and a tone of amazement, for it folds neatly into the meditation I was working on today.

That's Timm's bike--a frequent prop for his outdoor freelance gigs.

Last night after coming home from work (Beth sewing away, finishing up a couple more pillowcases to sell to Victoria's Antiques in Leesburg), I hooked up this laptop to Timm's external hard drive, searching for Timm’s images to use for our Christmas card this year. It's been so cool of late -- in the mid-30's this morning as I try to write with Hugo and Belle, our no-longer-kittens, both curled in my lap, paws intertwined -- that I'm thinking of the holidays, would like to a card that honors Timm's work. (Mom will also do a card using one of his images -- an unusual choice which you all will probably see in your mailbox in a few weeks ...)

There are still surprises to be found there in them thar hills of data. I opened a job folder of promotional shots Timm took on a bright obviously hot day in mid-July 2007 for the opening of the L.L. “Stubb” Stewart State Park in Oregon. Amid a couple dozen shots of stuff that would please his client – folks eating at picnic tables or hiking, natural scenes, a ribbon-cutting. Not very Christmaslike, not what I was searching for. To wit:













But what is this? Tucked in the series is a self-portrait of Timm sitting at a picnic table having coffee & enjoying a great wide Western panorama, big sky, rolling hills, light forever gilding the horizon.



The care Timm took to get the right one of this shot – there are about six to eight takes -- shows that the shot meant something special to him. And it wasn’t the only time he used himself as a subject in a job; remember the ones of him standing at some height looking over the Rogue River, and walking the shores of Tillamook, and riding his trail bike on the OC&E Trail.


Rather than try to catch an event in motion (shooting all those candids of people about their day), here he narrows down to one image, puts himself in it, and takes the shot over and over and over, moving his tripod to frame the image right, changing exposure and depth of field, changing some small bit of his person, the way he walks or sits or looks.


Oddly, in most of these series we don't see Timm's eyes, he's looking away or wearing sunglasses. Looking at them now after his death, Timm in these images is present and not, his gaze faraway, his blue eyes hidden from us. It adds to the distance we feel from him, and makes the image seem other-worldly, a photo of a place where Timm resides now without us, his gaze averted from us, very privately taking in the panorama of natural beauty, wombed there perhaps forever.


Timm's mastery of his medium really shouts through in these pictures; he provides a good shoot for his client, mixing the boilerplate promotional images with takes that are intimate of their location, gorgeous revelations which stand quite ably on their own – “spontaneous moments of grace” which Timm had learned to blunder accidentally onto with a seriousness that was almost deadly.








I don’t mean that harshly, only than to suggest that perhaps a transformation was at work in Timm’s best creations, moving the drama of motion and perpetual, almost self-destructive blundering onto an inner stage, spiritualizing the mess so to speak, to become a magician of moments, capturing the whole beautiful experience of God, that healing natural vista or lavish floral close-up, in the blink of a practiced eye -- or shutter. He who was so accident-prone became a portraitist of grace.