Week Four Homework II

 

I might be settling on this picture I think, though where it will go I don't know.  

Venice some time ago, this was taken in an apartment me and my wife were staying in with four friends. I like the light, the colours, the furniture, the covers suggestive of storage for winter, the suggestion of time passed, of history. I like the empty chair, though "like" is perhaps the wrong word: what the empty chair suggests to me is absence. None of us who were there have died, but the six of us will never be together again as two of the other four had a serious falling out on another trip away and have never made it up. Additionally, one of those present at the time has significant health problems that make such a trip in the future impossible. So in other words, the six of us won't be together again, and the chair and the mood, the feel, of this picture reflect this to me. In addition, looking more closely, I note that there are two chairs, both empty, and that they suggest a couple, or friendship and conversation, but of course these are absent. (The medium, still photographs, is silent too and thereby inherently lends itself to representing times past, to remembering what once was or might have been). Finally, the chairs face the light and to me (your mileage may vary) they suggest that something is happening out of the frame: to the right and invisible to us now is what was really happening then - the event that was taking place at the time isn't my taking the photograph but the joy of being alive and being with others, but what the photograph represents is the sadness of the passing of this event, this time. 

All photographs to me contain something of the melancholic, given enough time, though some more than others ("All pictures are sad because they're about dead people. Paintings don't make you think of a special time or a specific event. With photos I always think I am looking at something dead." David Bailey). The setting is melancholy too: Venice is a melancholy place - it is a city of the past, a beautiful but deathly place, slowly crumbling and representing what once was, not the future. A caption is needed to ensure that the viewer knows this was in Venice, but put it in a narrative set of pictures and I think it would potentially fit right in.