Photo editor Enza Marcy says farewell

Illustration by Marissa Stratton

Enza Marcy, Photo Editor 

There’s this poem that I love, that I’ve had taped to my bedroom wall for years and that I keep coming back to. It’s titled “Poetry” by Marianne Moore, and it’s a poem about poetry. 

It begins, “I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle / Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there is in / it after all, a place for the genuine.”

Before I started my time at The CT, I photographed my friends, my roommates, my bus rides on the Greyhound and strangers who showed me some of the purest glimpses of empathy I have ever known. Before that, I photographed my mom caring for her mom, my grandmother, as she wrestled with losing her sense of self and the world around her to dementia. Before that, maybe some bad pictures of rocks and leaves and portraits that spent far too long in Photoshop. 

For the past two years at The CT, I have been photographing our community in Richmond. Beautiful, special people. Beautiful, special Richmond. And I am grateful for every moment, every person, every picture. 

As my time with The CT comes to an end, as seasons pass and the outside world continues apace and the light continues to dance over trees or someone’s cheek whether my camera is in my hands or left at home — I am reminded that this is all so fleeting. And, even still, I am reminded that photography is capable of a certain kind of magic. 

Memory is fragile. But the photographs are still there.

There are days when the camera is slung around my neck and I’m rushing out the door on assignment. There are days when the camera stays tucked away in my backpack abyss. Whether the camera comes out or doesn’t, whether the picture is made with a shutter click or frozen in time as a memory, I am grateful for every person I have met along my CT journey. 

To our talented team of editors, writers, illustrators, designers and photographers I’ve had the pleasure of learning from. To the students, educators, poets, artists, gardeners, business owners, mothers and daughters and brothers and sisters I’ve had the honor of photographing. To the beautiful Richmond community I’ve been lucky enough to grow with. 

Thank you for welcoming me into your lives, for sharing the moment a picture is made, and for discovering that there is in it after all, a place for the genuine — together.

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