In 2016, my teenage son Matas, a budding astrophysicist, and I, bonded during a series of road trips during what he describes as a “…pretty low point in his life”

 

I used a variety of cameras, but it was the slow set up and film loading ritual of my 8x10” Kodak 2D that best matched the pace of our long, methodical, and existential conversations that covered deep and sometimes dark topics such as the cosmos, purpose of life, friendships, feelings of hopelessness, suicidal thinking, atheism, and God. Armed with his 10” Dobsonian telescope and with my antique box camera, we covered thousands of miles scanning the night skies and documenting the west until finally setting a course to view the total solar eclipse, on August 21, 2017, at John Day Fossil Bed National Monument in Oregon.