Binary Opposition Diptych 2

 

These are pictures of me. But the person in the first photo is not the same person as in the second photo. I changed alot in the eight months between pictures. 

Both photographs have rivers in the background. In the one on the left, we can see the small Frenchman River with its lush banks where is flows through the village of Eastend, Saskatchewan. The picture on the left shows the Mighty Mississippi and part of the skyline of the Big Easy, which is another name for New Orleans. 

I canoed from one community to the other. Of all the cargo on board, nothing was more important than my uncle Mitch Hamon's ashes. I spread his ashes in New Orleans because that was a city he loved for its food and music. 

The journey took eight months and covered a distance of over 3000 miles or 5000 kilometres. During that experience, I transformed. In the first picture, I look somewhat naive. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. In the second picture, I look confident. I knew what I could do and I was more accepting of what I couldn't.