Richard Pelletier's Photography Journal

{ writer + photographer }

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Remember Who You Were

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Picture of a tree in bright light, close up. Neighborhood in background.
"Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstance might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were." - Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

If This Is A Man

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-Primo Levi, If This Is A Man

You who live safe

In your warm houses

You who find warm food

And friendly faces when you return home.

Consider if this is a man

Who works in mud,

Who knows no peace,

Who fights for a crust of bread,

Who dies by a yes or a no.

Consider if this is a woman

Without hair, without name,

Without the strength to remember,

Empty are her eyes, cold her womb,

Like a frog in winter.

Never forget that this has happened.

Remember these words.

Engrave them in your hearts,

When at home or in the street,

When lying down, when getting up.

Repeat them to your children.

Or may your houses be destroyed,

May illness strike you down,

May your offspring turn their faces from you.

-Primo Levi, If This Is A Man