the stillness of snowstorms is one that poets and painters--all lyricists really--love to point out. but what I find even more striking is how snowstorms emphasize the difference between the indoors and the outdoors. as a little girl I remember watching snowstorms from behind windowsills, stilled by the idea of watching something freezing cold and unfathomably white and infinite from the comfort of a living room. while the indoors were warm, concrete and dim in the muted morning light, the outdoors seemed alien, hidden beneath something that, when only a flake, melted on the tip of your nose and seemed smaller than dust.
using the camera to focus on this gulf between the outdoors and the indoors during a snow storm proved fulfilling but also complicating: like our own eyes--our own selves--the camera struggles to compromise the piercing brightness of a snowy afternoon with the muted existence of the indoors. I'm left wondering whether it is that idea of stillness that we feel most during a snowstorm, or the reassurance of being inside, watching it all become white around us?
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