No Lifeguard
Sand Castles
Inheritance
On TIme
Wrought
Gone
On the Title
Ecclesiastes: the King James Bible translates its central word, הֶבֶל (hevel), as "vanity" — Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Four centuries of English readers have heard that as a warning about pride, about looking too long in the mirror.
But hevel literally means breath, or vapor — mist that rises and is gone. The book isn't accusing anyone of vanity. Its complaint is stranger, and more honest: that effort, done well or badly, wise or foolish, arrives at the same vanishing point regardless. Nobody's at fault.
These pictures are a reading of that word, not an illustration of it. Vapor, not vanity.