This photo always brings two things to the forefront of my mind.
The first is a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. In it, he describes the impermanence of human impact over time. While I do not possess his lyricism, I have certainly been granted the opportunity to see and capture my own version of this sentiment.
In the wet tropics, I have seen smooth sheets of concrete stolen by moss and vinery within a decade of it being laid. My hands have run across roughly-hewn timbers, worn smooth and thin by the eroding sands of blistered deserts. Amidst the frozen wastes of polar regions, I have witnessed the decay that comes with wind and changing ice.
In every instance, the legacies of human impact are slowly resumed by nature. Shelters are broken and then destroyed. Tools rust and crumble. Holes fill with vegetation and soil, until the scars they cover, heal. There is no forever.
The other item of which I am reminded is the image of a boot print left by early astronauts on the surface of the moon. Unlike that impression, this footstep will last less than a day. The next tide will wipe clean the sand and shell grit that has captured this history. When I took this image on the shoreline of Tannum Sands, I remember wondering who had made it. I was curious to know who had left me such a carefully crafted mark, no matter how accidental.
It is only now that I am prepared to speculate. It could have only been one man. Ozymandias.
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