I have spent quite some time walking in the local Waitpinga bushland this autumn. I walked with Maya on the morning walk and with Maleko on the afternoon walk. Whilst being preoccupied with dipping my toes into making walking art I noticed the dead leaves hanging from the branches of the eucalypts as well as the bark.
I'd ignored them up to now as I had been primarily focused on the bark with a 35mm film camera. The leaves were concealed -- merged into the background. In the last couple of weeks of walking I started to look at the dead leaves as I walked past them. Their speckled brownness stood out from the background world of green. I started to photograph them closeup.
What emerged was the simple awareness of something present-at-hand in its sheer presence-at-hand. The seeing involved in the encounter with the present-at-hand gives precedence to the entity and it does so precisely because it detaches itself from the background context. The emergence of the dead leaves into presence can be understood as an event of the un-concealment of the dead leaves out of concealment. The photography discloses this coming into presence.