Star Apples

Though it is light out when I go to bed and light out when I wake up in the morning, I will occasionally wake up in the middle of the night and wander under one of the sky lights and see the stars above. I am reminded of the long all night drive that my father and brother would take to the lake in Canada.

Being the youngest I was delegated to the back seat which was fine by me. I could stretch out and sleep or move around without impediment. Best of all the sky could be viewed from back window of the car. After midnight the upper New York highways, either Rt. 17 or the Northway rarely had any traffic. There were no lights for miles at a stretch and no one behind shining their lights. The darkness brought out the stars which reminded me of the freckles on an apple.

Many years later I became acquainted with photographer, Duane Michaels. Michaels is a sequential photographer. In other words he tells stories with a sequence of photographs. On series that intrigued me was a photo of a collection of stars in the sky. The next photo one could see that the stars had changes into the freckles on an apple, the next shot had the apple in a woman’s hand and the final shot was of a woman feeding the apple to a man.

When I saw this series I was delighted that I wasn’t the only person that could see stars in apples.