Mercy Street, Dreamer’s Alley
elderly man looking out at sea - jeju, south korea
Just a few weeks ago I walked by a pretty dilapidated building in Seoul. A place where someone's dream has quite obviously ended, where the vision that brought something into existence has moved on, failed or simply run its course. But it lingers on, the walls still stand and the rooms still hold space. The architecture of someone's hope remains long after the dreamer has gone.
There is a song by Peter Gabriel I really enjoy that reminds me of this liminal notion. I think at this point I have shared ‘Mercy Street’ with at least two dozens of people and every time someone asks, I tell them the same thing: to dream is to persevere. If you are looking for the connection between my conclusion and his piece of art I recommend to take a quiet listen and let yourself be embraced. The fundamentals of this song explore the idea of survival amidst tremendous despair, inspired by poet Anne Sexton, and how everything we are surrounded by, was, in its humble beginnings, just a wishful thought in someone's head.
The song speaks of how all buildings, all cars, were once just dreams. I think about that part of the song quite often whenever I stroll through randomly chosen side alleys with my camera, examining raw and quiet spaces of everyday life. Some empty parking garage at dusk. The worn steps of an apartment building where thousands of feet have traced the same path. A single window glowing in an otherwise dark building. Shattered glass below a curb.
These aren't remarkable things. But they're evidence of persistence. Someone imagined that parking garage. Drew it. Poured concrete. Built something from nothing because they needed it to exist. That's what dreaming is, not just the pretty, aspirational version we talk about at graduations but also the stubborn insistence on bringing something into the world that wasn't there before.
As a photographer I'm drawn to these monuments of quiet perseverance. A corner store that's been run by the same family for thirty years. The handwritten sign taped to a door. The chair someone left on a curb, still perfectly functional, just no longer needed. Each one represents someone's dream made tangible, even if that dream was as simple as "I need somewhere to sit" or "people need groceries in this neighborhood."
Gabriel's song understands something about survival that took me a long time to learn: that continuing to exist in the face of despair is itself an act of creation. That waking up and putting on my clothes when everything feels impossible is its own form of dreaming, the dream that today might be bearable and that tomorrow might be different.
That's what the song means to me. To dream isn't about the destination. It's about the perseverance of bringing something from the abstract into the real. Of saying "this could exist" and then doing the unglamorous work of making it exist. Of drawing light from the simple ability of imagining something that has not yet come to fruition.
Every photograph I take is my own version of this. A moment that existed only in my mind's eye until I directed my camera at something and pressed the shutter. A way of seeing that I am trying to make real, trying to share and trying to preserve against the inevitable forgetting that comes with time.
Dreaming and persevering are the same thing, just different words for the stubborn human insistence on making something from nothing and refusing to let the imagined remain imaginary.
Buildings don't announce themselves. Cars rust without attendance. But they were all just someone's small or large act of faith that what they imagined could become real. And now here they stand, holding space in the world and show us that perseverance looks like this: solid and unglamorous.
This is why I photograph. Every dream that becomes real is proof that we can survive our despair long enough to make something that outlasts it.