"In his next incarnation he will be a Polynesian spear-fisherman, balanced easily on an outrigger as the sapphire lagoon undulates beneath him, watching the fish scatter away like silver coins dropped in the sea. He will plow the pellucid sea and harrow the waves and harvest fish as plump and yellow as Iowa corn.

"In his next life he will be a boulevardier, idling away the late morning in an elegant but discreet pātisserie, savouring the quiet and regarding with relish the day as it stretches out before him, absolutely unimpeded by any sort of meaningful activity. In the afternoon he will indolently scatter suggestions like seed corn and in the evening reap in the resulting invitations.

"In his next manifestation he will be a science fiction novelist, imagining worlds where old men in bib overalls who work long and hard with little or no recognition are lauded, where an allegiance to place and purpose are seen as admirable, and a willingness to till the soil and tend the land is perceived as an act of holiness."

Sometimes the writers impersonate their mysterious subjects, as with this baby in a tub. In another photo of a strange and unidentified classical building, the text ignores the photo's centerpiece and helpfully points the eye to a different element of the composition I might never have noticed, a puddle on the lawn. It's always hard for words to compete with arresting images, and so many other combinations aim for minor-key spins on their main subjects, who busily merge, float, dance, relate, pose, perform yoga moves or just collapse and give up.

Photo by Caryn Stein, Utata Front Page April 12, 2007

I relate mostly to the human photos in this collection, though I will occasionally pause to admire a building's glass skin, an unsteady still life or a box on a wall.

If, like me, you have a more literary than photographic bent, you'll be pleased by the variety of inspirations behind the text passages here. The editors aren't afraid to rely on excellent source material for their text passages, and so, day by day, we can jump between Rene Descartes, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Dylan Thomas, Ralph Waldo Emerson (who makes a few appearances) and, further out, Chuck Palahniuk, Emily Post and even Monty Python.

Photo by luckygirllefty, Utata Front Page June 24, 2009

I've never been part of the Utata community, but I was blown away by the vision, joy and serendipity I found here when I was asked to write about the upcoming 1000th front page. As I approached the task of finding words for this unique display, I worried that I'd have to resort to some well-worn cliches about photography, like "this site shows us a new way of seeing." But Utata really does something bigger than this: it shows us new ways of sharing, of creating art together -- tribal, indeed.