KENZIE KATE FLOYD

I cannot speak to anyone else’s experience but my own, so I’ll start there.

When you are tasked with documenting something for somebody, you do your best to get to the heart of it, to put yourself in their position. To get to the heart of their emotion and experience and try to translate it.

But you can’t really know

This is what I saw at TSP:

I did not run TSP or crew. I don’t know what that experience is like. I know we all came with our own reasons, with our own objectives. I came to witness: to spectate an experience that famously has no spectators.

“NO SPECTATORS”

The definition of spectator is someone who is present as a spectator for a sporting event. I was certainly present, and it was certainly some sort of sporting event, seeing that it felt impossible and absurd to explain to friends outside of the running world what the fuck I was up to the last weekend of March.

There were definitely a lot of us out there with cameras—everywhere it turned, it felt like. Were we spectating? Were we participating?

I went into TSP knowing very little about it and wanting it to remain that way. How blank of a slate could I have, so that I could be open to see and experience whatever happened?

I was surprised by how much brain power it took to drive, to navigate, to keep track of the runners and which leg we were on. The lack of sleep, the pivot from the plan. Any sense of what I “wanted to get” was gone in that first dark stretch out of Santa Monica. It’s hard to photograph runners! It’s hard to photograph this endeavor! It was baffling and impressive to think that any photographer out there could not only have a strategy and a plan, but to execute it and post it from the road.

Anthony and I documented our team— our friends—together: we ran segments with them, shared food, slept next to one another. All of our shared experiences merged and overlapped and maybe looked similar to one another’s at times, but each was our own. Photographers included.

The most visceral memory of TSP for me, was not photographed.

I can see it in my mind.

The sun is setting on Saturday.

Anthony and I have each just run a couple of miles with runners on our team, through the winding hills at dusk, a memorable and moving moment for each of us in different ways, for different reasons. Or maybe we all are moved by the same reason, the same connection, the same exhilaration of exhaustion and grit and connection and how beautiful the desert is and how lucky we are.

Anyway: everyone had recently cried.

Anthony and I are standing outside of our car, every door open, music on loud. We aren’t taking photos. We are just looking around, listening, seeing. I’m thinking about loss, I’m thinking about luck. We let the song finish in its entirety.

I don’t have a photo of this moment but I can see it in my mind. I can feel it in my photos.

I wonder what sticks out the most for Anthony. For each person on our team?

The role of the artist is to tell the truth; to bear witness and to metabolize, transform, and translate what we see. The artist is not anonymous. No photo is truly objective. Everything we make is from our vantage point and infused with our own experience, too. Our own emotion, and our own idea of the story we want to tell.

There is no way to photograph something, truly, without partaking. And so maybe in that way there really are no spectators. Despite the fact that there are those who are there just to document, we too are participants

This is what I experienced at TSP:

I don’t know what it means for anyone else

And I don’t know what I’m trying to say with it

But I know what the experience felt like, for me

Everything merges together in memory, compacted into one long feeling. This spring, for me, was one long blur of grief and awe.

My best friend died two months ago. I see her everywhere. I feel her here. I feel struck by the unfairness of loss and death and struck by how lucky we are to be able to do something like this. This is what I’m thinking about, on a loop; feeling, on a loop. Even in the desert.Can you see that in the photos? Can you feel it?I’m working all the time and feel simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated. I’m oscillating between my heart and my brain. So many people I admire and love are out here, running mile after mile, doing this gnarly thing. I’m in awe of them. I want to do their experience justice. I’m trying to do a good job.I feel out of my depths out here as a runner, as an artist. I’m trying to stay present, I’m trying to stay awake. Can you see that, too, or is it just me?

What day is it? What segment are we on? Has anyone slept?

Anthony and I regroup for the nth time that day.

I load another roll of film, and we keep looking around.