Decagon Gallery
photo: Justin Tedford
p 2/3
Monday Flash
a photo that changed you
Hi Ján,
Do you remember this photo? You took it 54 years ago. You were 17 and wanted to go to college to study photography. But things turned out so bad that you didn’t even send in your application. You had several photos ready for your presentation. Among them was a photo of your little neighbor Hugo. You had them judged by your friend Alena, who had graduated from the school you wanted to go to. She told you that you had a chance and she liked Hugo the most.
Life went on in a different direction, but he didn’t stop taking photos. Two years ago, I remembered the photo of Hugo. I scanned it, “dusted it off” and sent it to a portrait photography competition. After a few weeks, I received an email saying that the photo had been selected for the shortlist. I only believed it when I actually saw the photo in the selection. Who knows how life would have turned out if you had sent in your application. Maybe you would have gotten into school, had a different wife, different children, a different life. But I don’t regret anything. Everything is as it should be. Wife, children, I’m enjoying my retirement in peace and I’m a single, free amateur photographer. I take pictures of whatever I want and I’m satisfied that the first award I received in 1971 was
confirmed by this photo, taken two years
later, and which was awarded after 52
years. In addition, I had my photos
exhibited in Athens, in Trieste, and in
several exhibitions back home in Slovakia.
Ján Baracka
Rakovice, Slovakia
Curator's Note: “And life goes on…” — this was the first thought that came to my mind when I read the text and looked at the image. To me, this photograph is not about regret, but about acceptance and freedom. It speaks of a life that did not follow the expected path, yet unfolded into something whole and meaningful. What feels especially touching is the idea of planting a seed that only reveals its value decades later. The photograph waited patiently, just like the photographer himself, and like the gaze of Hugo in the image. When Ján says, “I’m enjoying my retirement in peace and I’m a single, free amateur photographer,” I imagine him as a free bird—moving lightly, without bitterness, without the weight of “what if.” There is a quiet wisdom here: not every missed opportunity is a failure, and not every detour is a mistake. Some paths simply take longer to show why they were right. The image of young Hugo carries innocence, continuity, and time itself. Seen alongside the story, it becomes proof that meaning is not lost when plans change—it only transforms. For me, this work is a beautiful reminder that fulfillment does not always come from arriving where we once wanted to go, but from embracing where we actually end up.
Jan Goeke
Hannover, Germany
Crossroad.
This is a photo I took just last week, during a phase of my life where many decisions are still waiting to be made—both personally and professionally. For me, the image captures that feeling perfectly: a crossroads shaped by what lies behind me, the paths branching to the left and right, and an unknown way stretching out in front of me, open and unwritten, waiting to take form. This photo is important to me because it helps me pause and acknowledge where I am right now, instead of rushing toward the next step. It reminds me that uncertainty is not something to fear, but something that holds possibility. Whenever I look at it, I feel grounded, aware that even not knowing the direction yet is part of the journey.
Curator's Note: What I find compelling here is how clearly the photographer translates an inner state into a visual structure. He speaks about a crossroad where three directions are visible, while one path—the one ahead—remains undefined. This idea is represented with clarity and subtlety: the figure stands at the intersection, surrounded by readable traces of movement, yet facing a space that is still blank, open, and unresolved. To me, this is a minimal image with a lot to say. The simplicity of the composition allows the concept to breathe. The acknowledgment of the present moment—of where the photographer stands right now—feels honest and grounded. His statement that “uncertainty is not something to fear, but something that holds possibility” is not only thought-provoking in text, but convincingly embodied in the photograph itself. I am especially drawn to the ending of the caption, where he says that not knowing the direction yet is part of the journey. For me, this is where the image and text truly complete each other. There is a quiet adrenaline here—the kind that comes from allowing yourself not to know, from trusting the flow rather than trying to control the next move. It reflects a willingness to stay open to what life, or the universe, has prepared, instead of demanding certainty. I can feel how deeply this image resonates with the photographer’s own life at this moment, and I appreciate the conscious connection he makes between the photograph and his personal process. This image embodies the core intention of the call: it is not just an image of a place, but a visual articulation of a turning point—where reflection, uncertainty, and possibility meet.
Shannon Maltbie-Davis
Basehor, KS
To My Younger Self,
On the evening “Swimmer” was taken, you sat by the pool and watched your boys play in the water for a long while before opening a package that had come in the mail earlier that day. Inside laid a Nikon 85mm f/1.8E AF-S FX Nikkor lens that you had finally allowed yourself to purchase after endless rounds of questioning whether you had the skills needed to be a photographer.
As you attached the lens to your camera and pointed it at your youngest son, you were shocked. It was as if a portal that you had never known existed had been opened, and you were able to see more clearly than ever before. Deep down, you knew that lens would become your favorite tool. A tool that you would treasure and diligently use as you worked towards becoming a legitimate artist.
“Swimmer” was the first photograph that you took that made you feel as though you were capable… that you weren’t an imposter. An image
that would successfully open
many doors for you as a fine art
photographer over the years.
Curator's Note: To me, Shannon’s work touches on an experience many photographers can deeply relate to: the moment when a new tool changes not just how we photograph, but how we see. Whether it is a new lens or a different piece of equipment, there are times when a tool opens a door we didn’t even know existed. I find the relationship between photographers and their tools fascinating, and it is a topic often overlooked by those outside the practice—which is completely natural. In this work, however, Shannon opens that conversation in a very honest and personal way. What I appreciate is that the lens is not presented as a technical upgrade, but as a catalyst for confidence, permission, and vision. The photograph marks the moment when doubt begins to loosen and seeing becomes clearer, more intentional. This quiet shift—allowing oneself to believe “I can do this”—is a powerful form of change, and it aligns beautifully with the spirit of this open call. Visually, the image strengthens this idea even further. Seeing her son underwater, suspended between blur and clarity, feels like a precise metaphor for what Shannon describes. To me, that short moment before the child surfaces mirrors her own experience: a transition from uncertainty into a new way of seeing. Just as the world looks distorted beneath the water and then suddenly transparent when we emerge, this image reflects the photographer’s passage into a clearer, more confident visual language. I chose this work because it shows how transformation does not always arrive through crisis. Sometimes it comes quietly—through trust, curiosity, and a tool that helps us recognize what was already there.
Justin Tedford
Cedar Rapids, IA
March 9, 2008, 1030 hours
Baghdad, Iraq
Justin,
This photo will live on an external drive for many years, lost and forgotten, taken during a time in your life when you longed for it, when you served your country. Only to find that the dream is a nightmare, not the dream you longed for as a child. The constant state of alertness, worry, and anger is slowly changing your brain chemistry, unbeknownst to you. This is more than a photo; it’s the crossroads of change in your life. You’re nearly two months from the end of your deployment to the Middle East, and you’re ready for change and to move on with life. If you only knew the horrors of struggle that are in your future. They will slowly creep up on you unknowingly; others will see it, but you will not, and the road ahead will not be easy.
The camera you brought helped keep your sanity on this stepping stone of life. I want you to remember, the tough road that lies ahead, that you won’t see coming, the camera again will be your saving grace. You thought this photograph was just a snapshot in time, forgotten to time, but it was a turning point in your life. From here on out, you envision the world for what it is and what it can be. You’re shaping your vision and creativity as a photographer.
What you don’t see coming is the anxiety, major depressive disorder, and PTSD. You’ll believe that these three diagnoses are what now define you; in fact, it’s what will help you change the world, for the better.
P.S. It’s not the end of your life, it’s only a new beginning.
With Appreciation,
Justin
Curator's Note: What is most compelling here is the strong dialogue between the image and the text. The presence of the rifle alongside the mention of the camera immediately sets up a tension between past and future, violence and healing, duty and choice. This work feels like a confession made in the present, grounded in a tough past, yet carrying a quiet hope forward. When I look at the image, I read it symbolically: I see three ‘legs’: one rooted in the past, meant to remain there, and two needed to step forward into the future. The eye—looking through the camera’s viewfinder—becomes the force that makes this transition possible. The camera is not presented merely as a tool, but as a companion, even a kind of savior, something capable of holding and transforming trauma rather than denying it. I appreciate how the photograph and text flow together as a single stream of thought. The image feels heavy and grounded, yet the narrative opens space for change. For me, this is a powerful reflection on how photography can become a means of survival, healing, and re-imagining the future without erasing what came before.
Julia Nagai
Kashiwa, Japan
Dear Julia,
At the end of June 2024, your life will change forever. Suddenly, your left leg will go numb, and you’ll become the sickest you’ve ever felt in the days to follow. It’ll take eight weeks to be diagnosed with a viral infection attacking your nervous system, and at that point you’ll be left with significant paralysis in your leg, despite antivirals and physical therapy. Your camera will remain your loyal friend. Your desire to take photos will give you the courage to go out into the world with a mobility aid for the first time. But photographing will feel bad for a while. The weakness and tingling you feel in your leg will distract you as you carefully approach stray cats or try to frame street shots. You’ll feel odd holding up your camera with most of your weight on your healthy leg, cane dangling off a strap on your wrist.
It gets better.
Towards the end of summer 2025, you’ll start visiting a small garden in eastern Tokyo. On the day you take this photo for
the first time since you fell ill, you won’t be distracted by the strange sensations in your leg or feel trapped by the limitations of your body. Creativity will begin to burn very bright in you again as the red September spider lilies bloom. Not long after, you’ll join a kind, supportive collective of photographers, and develop a new love for image making deeper than you’ve ever felt before.
♡ January 2026
Curator's Note: What stayed with me most is the way photography becomes an act of courage here. “Your desire to take photos will give you the courage to go out into the world” feels central to both the image and the story. To me, photography is not a goal in this moment—it is a reason to keep moving, to stay connected to life despite physical limitations. This photograph may appear quiet and ordinary at first, but to me that is exactly where its poetry lies. The softness of the image reflects a gentle return to presence rather than a dramatic turning point. The blooming spider lilies feel like a metaphor for hope—an ongoing desire to observe life, to trust its flow, and to remain open. For me, the strength of this work is in the harmony between image and text. The photograph doesn’t explain or dramatize the experience; it simply accompanies it. Together, they speak of resilience as something calm, patient, and deeply human.
Trina O'Hara
Perugia, Italy
Dear Trina,
This image is for you. It marks the silence and ache of infertility—a time in your life when grief lived in your body and lingered in the quiet moments.
This photograph reminds you of the times you sent warm, positive energy to your creative centre. It holds the energy you envisioned within yourself—an inner force you longed would spark creation.
Trina, this photo honours those years and years… the cycle of hope and heartbreak, of waiting and wondering, of holding your breath every month and quietly mourning when the answer was not this time.
This image speaks to the weight of baby showers, to the smell of jasmine as you walked home from the doctor’s office after a miscarriage, to the invisible sorrows of teaching other people’s children.
Let this image be a quiet reminder that good things do come.
Her name is Alix Joy. She was worth the wait.
With love,
Trina
Trina O’Hara
7 October 2025
Curator's Note: To me, this photograph feels deeply personal and honest. What stays with me is how it carries a long period of waiting, uncertainty, and emotional exhaustion without trying to explain or justify it. The image doesn’t ask for sympathy — it simply exists as a trace of what was lived. Reading the caption together with the image, I feel that this photograph stayed with the photographer through a very difficult time. It wasn’t taken to resolve anything, but to hold something that couldn’t be shared easily with others. The body in the image feels strong and vulnerable at the same time, shaped by experience rather than defined by pain. I chose this work because it shows how the meaning of a photograph can change as life changes. What once represented waiting and loss later becomes part of a much larger story. For me, this is exactly what the open call is about: an image that grows with the photographer and takes on new meaning as life moves forward.
Hèctor Abela Arbués
Reus, Spain
Hello, 20-year-old me!
You’re about to do a photoshoot that will change your life (no biggie). It turns out fine, even if you’re so nervous that you feel sick, so just try to relax. I do know you, though. And I know you’re a drama queen. Sadly, that’s still true nowadays.
Right now, your nerves make it hard to see past this moment, so you don’t quite realize how much this photoshoot will shift things. Trust me: it only gets wilder from here. Try to really take it in.
After all those years listening to Pierre Lapointe’s sad songs, he’s suddenly right there, in front of your camera. Even six years later, I still have trouble wrapping my head around how it all unfolded. It’s surreal, in the best possible way.
So, honestly… congrats. We did it. This is a big moment, and you’ll have some great photos to remember it by. Take care of yourself, and don’t forget to hold onto your friends and your family. (You won’t, though. I know you.)
Also, if you ever feel like investing, there’s this thing called Bitcoin. You’ll thank me later. Oh, and stock up on toilet paper before 2020 rolls around!
Love,
You. Me. You know… me.
Curator's Note: This photograph operates on two timelines at once: the moment of its making, and the years of meaning that accreted afterward. At first glance, the image is formally controlled and deliberately composed. The subject is seated behind a worn table, posture upright, hands grounded, gaze direct but withheld. The embroidered jacket—ornate, floral, unmistakably performative—contrasts sharply with the restrained palette of the background and the quiet severity of the pose. Nothing here is accidental, yet nothing feels ornamental for its own sake. The image understands restraint as a form of power. What gives the photograph its weight, however, is not the celebrity of the sitter or the elegance of the styling, but the photographer’s relationship to the moment. The accompanying letter reframes the image as a hinge point—a threshold between anticipation and aftermath, between aspiration and arrival. This is not a photograph about meeting an admired artist; it is a photograph about crossing an internal line: the instant when desire turns into lived experience. Importantly, the work resists nostalgia. The letter does not mythologize youth or success. Instead, it acknowledges growth as something messy, ironic, and ongoing. The humor—about drama, about Bitcoin, about toilet paper—doesn’t undercut the emotional truth; it sharpens it. It reminds us that life-changing moments rarely announce themselves with grandeur. They often arrive disguised as nerves, chance encounters, or assignments we’re terrified to fail.
Andy Sachs
New York, NY
Life is going to get pretty bad. You’re going to be horribly depressed, drift away from most of your friends, end up on five medications, and break down crying over other people’s successes. But this I will tell to you; therefore I will hope: your life is going to get pretty good too. You’re going to fix problems you didn’t know you had. You’re going to meet people you didn’t know existed. And in the end you will see that all that remains when the rest has been burned away is what really matters in life.
Keep playing
frisbee in suits.
— A.
Curator's Note: This photograph reads as a quiet act of resistance. Set against the imposing symmetry of an institutional stone façade, two figures occupy an expanse of grass that feels deliberately outsized, almost indifferent to them. The architecture is heavy with authority—orderly, repetitive, immovable. In contrast, the human action unfolding in the foreground is loose, improvised, and fleeting: a frisbee mid-throw, a body leaning awkwardly into motion, another figure waiting, uncertain but present. Nothing monumental is happening. And that is precisely the point. The accompanying letter strips away any temptation to romanticize youth or inevitability. It is blunt, unsentimental, and honest about suffering—depression, isolation, medication, envy. There is no arc of triumph promised here, no narrative of seamless self-actualization. Instead, the letter proposes endurance as a form of clarity. What survives is not ambition, status, or comparison, but the small, sustaining gestures that remain when everything else falls apart. “Keep playing frisbee in suits” reads less as advice than as a philosophy. Hold onto the practices that tether you to yourself, even when they seem insignificant. Especially then. This photograph understands that meaning does not announce itself at the peak of experience. It survives in repetition, in play, in showing up for something small when everything else feels impossibly large.
Dear Apolonia,
On this day, February 26, 2021, you celebrate your 40th birthday during the Covid-19 pandemic by re-creating a photo you had taken on your twenty-first birthday. You had taken your 35mm Pentax out and started shooting with it again, and this roll of expired film would be the beginning of a renewed engagement with the art-making you had put aside for so long — to have a career, to have a child, etc. You do not know, at the moment of this photo, that almost five years from now, you will be trying hard to take yourself seriously as an artist again — that you will have photos in shows online and in person, and that you will again know what an important part of your life your art-making practice is.
At this moment, you are simply thinking about how it feels to turn 40 during a global pandemic, how to be a mom, what the world will look like when it opens up again, and whether there is enough light in the room to make a good-enough exposure. I wish I could tell you to keep going — but I don’t have to.
— Apolonia
2/26/21 // 12/31/25
Apolonia Panagopoulos
Alhambra, CA
Curator's Note: Apolonia's photograph is built on repetition—but it is not an act of nostalgia. It is an act of testing. The image shows a body at rest, lying down, framed from a low, intimate vantage point. The face turns slightly toward the camera, eyes open, alert, present. Light falls unevenly across the torso, a quiet flare touching the hand and chest, while the rest of the room recedes into softness and grain. The expired film asserts itself immediately: texture, uncertainty, a refusal of polish. Nothing here aims for perfection. The photograph accepts fragility as part of its structure. What makes this work resonate is the conscious decision to remake an earlier photograph—not to correct it, but to inhabit it again under radically different conditions. At twenty-one, the original image was likely made without consequence, without foreknowledge. At forty, during a global shutdown, the act of re-creation becomes reflective and provisional. The body is the same, but time has entered the frame. So have responsibility, interruption, postponement. The accompanying letter clarifies that this image is less about age than about continuity. The photographer is not announcing a return to art; she is quietly resuming it, almost accidentally, while attending to motherhood, uncertainty, and the practical question of whether the light is sufficient. That restraint matters. The photograph does not perform “the artist’s comeback.” It records the moment before belief fully returns.
Doug Hjelmstad
Gothenburg, NB
Doug,
When your thoughts return to that awful night in February of 2020 when you took his last breath and a part of you died along with him, you will recall feeling that you were not going to survive. As you descend into the worst time of your life, you will find that, while there are no detours or shortcuts around the valley of the shadow and losing a child is a devastation like no other, you still have life to live. You will go on to realize you are more capable of persevering and surviving and even thriving than you imagined. And, you will find that your photographs will play a crucial part in your emotional and spiritual restoration. This photo and other images you will create in the weeks and months ahead will help process your grief and, even more, remind you that even in the darkest night of the soul, there is still light…
Peace
— H.
Curator's Note: This photograph does not illustrate grief; it inhabits it. The image is built almost entirely from shadow and illumination—light bending, splitting, refracting across a surface that resists clarity. What appears is partial, unstable: a glass vessel, a stem, a curve, a doubled form created by refraction rather than intention. The photograph refuses a single point of focus. It asks the viewer to linger inside ambiguity, to accept that seeing clearly is not always possible, or even desirable. Formally, the image is quiet but dense. The warm, sepia-toned light carries a sense of evening, of interior time. Shadows fall heavily, yet they are not inert; they move, echo, repeat. The accompanying letter situates the image within an unspeakable rupture: the death of a child. Crucially, the letter does not ask the photograph to stand in for loss. Instead, it acknowledges the image as a companion to grief—something made alongside it, not after it. Photography here is not a memorial act. It is a survival act. The final line of the letter—“even in the darkest night of the soul, there is still light”—is not illustrated literally. Instead, the photograph tests that idea. It shows light that is fragile, indirect, altered by what it passes through. And still, it arrives.
Dear Leo,
I remember you climbing the electric pole.
You were a wild child, like the village where you grew up.
You always admired songbirds, their evermoving bodies, turning air into surrounding space.
I still love how you were raised by voice and force.
That day you climbed high, took the photo and scared yourself doing it.
But fear won’t let you stop anymore.
With love,
You ♡
Leo Kozsan
Budapest, Hungary
Curator's Note: This photograph carries the trace of something once difficult. The field feels calm, but not effortless — as if the quiet came after a long period of intensity. The repetition of the sunflowers suggests persistence rather than abundance, a steady presence shaped by experience. There is a sense of distance here, not from the world, but from fear. The image does not look upward or outward; it settles. The light is gentle, the focus imperfect, and that softness feels intentional — a way of staying present without needing to prove anything. What this work holds is not achievement, but release. A moment when movement gives way to grounding, and stillness becomes a choice rather than a pause. The photograph marks an internal shift: from pushing forward to allowing oneself to remain.
I had just left you — at the station — depressed and downhearted. I sat at the café window regretting having had to leave. And then I looked up — saw the rain falling — reflecting my teardrop on glass.
Karen Safer
Playa del Rey, CA
Curator's Note: This photograph holds a moment of emotional suspension. The rain on the glass blurs the boundary between inside and outside, turning the view into a surface for projection rather than observation. What we see feels less like weather and more like a state — fragile, heavy, and briefly lucid. The image does not dramatize sadness. Instead, it pauses within it. The droplets trace slow, uneven paths, mirroring the way emotion moves when there is no clear direction left. The world remains present, but slightly unreachable, softened by distance and reflection. This work captures a fleeting internal shift — the instant when pain is still there, yet no longer overwhelming. When looking outward becomes possible again, not as escape, but as acknowledgment.
Malcolm Glass
Clarksville, TN
Dear Malcolm,
First love. The love of your life. Your understanding of love, how to feel it, express it, live it, began with her.
And she stayed close to you on that long journey of discovering the real meaning of love. She stayed close to you in your thoughts, in your heart, though you’ve not seen her in seventy years.
With deep love,
4/15/57
1/12/26
Curator's Note: A single figure, held in a moment that feels both intimate and distant. The pose is unguarded, yet not performative — as if the image was made without awareness of time, audience, or consequence. What lingers here is not nostalgia, but continuity. The photograph carries the weight of something formative, something that did not end when the moment passed. It suggests how early experiences remain present, quietly shaping how closeness, tenderness, and love are understood long after the scene itself has faded. This work does not look back with longing. It holds memory as a living presence — something that stays, not as loss, but as a foundation quietly carried forward.
Sarah Lilja
Lake Elmo, MN
Curator's Note: This photograph marks a beginning. Created during the artist’s first residency in 2021 — a time she describes as filled with doubt and fear — the image stands in quiet contrast to that uncertainty. Nothing here feels anxious. The composition is measured and calm: a fallen tree extending into still water, its reflection softened by mist; a small boat drifting across the distance; morning light gently revealing the shoreline. The mist obscures the horizon, yet the photograph itself is clear and assured. It holds a sense of transition — of moving forward without full visibility. In light of the accompanying letter, the image becomes more than a landscape. It becomes evidence of trust: trust in seeing, in waiting, in allowing a moment to unfold. What she feared was not enough was, in fact, already present.
Dear Sarah,
You took this image during your first artist
residency in 2021 when you were so
inexperienced that you barely qualified as an
emerging artist. During the early days of the
residency you were really anxious and afraid –
afraid that you didn’t know how to make a good
photograph; anxious that you would let down the
sponsoring organization who took a risk on
you; afraid that your passion for photography
was not enough. But in the end, you made some
beautiful photographs, developed the self-
confidence to recognize your creative gifts, and
began an entirely new career in photography.
Bravo you!
copyright 2026 Decagon Gallery