I was once told that the difference between old people and young people is that the old talk about the past while the young speak of the future.  If that’s true, then what do you call someone who aims to simultaneously embrace the past, the present, and the future?

My suggestion?  A photographer.

Who else spends their days striking through life’s tiny slices of time searching for and translating merit and beauty and meaning and magic and art like a photographer does?  Musicians and artists and other creatives delve into nearby waters but, arguably, photographers do so in a very accessible and uniquely documentary way.

That documentary ability is one of photography’s most fascinating and powerful characteristics, in that it reminds us of the passage of time.  Who among us hasn’t been startled by looking at old photos of others (“that’s what my great-grandparents looked like?”) or ourselves (“I can’t believe I looked so young back then”)?  Take away documentary photographs and what is left are often imprecise memories that transform as they are recalled.

With that in mind, and after brainstorming for some time, I began a project last year which I’ve entitled The Morrissey Lifelong Project.  Soon after the birth of Ayla, their first child, Stephen and Zoe posed for a photo in front of their beautiful, historic home in the Shaganappi neighborhood of Calgary.   At intervals that we hope will be as frequent as possible, we will recreate the photo over and over through changes of season and family additions and technological advances and landscaping fashions and whatever other twists in the story the future may hold.  We aim to make this a lifelong timelapse project.

Perhaps not so incidentally, the word “shaganappi” means “rawhide thong or lacing” in the Cree language.  How fitting it is that we are lacing together the extended version of the Morrissey family history in this visual format.

Here are the first three photos in the project.

March 11, 2012:

January 1, 2013:

March 4, 2013: