Oasisby
LevTComment by ubique: Well, what an undiscovered gem this is! Been here over 4 months and had just 6 views before mine. And yet it deserves so much more.
I've just spent 15 minutes with this photograph. Me getting into it, and it getting into me. And it was worth the effort. It became more absorbing and rewarding the longer I looked. I'm still not sure I drained it of all its possibilities, but I gave it a good shot.
My first impression was that it is a
theatrical kind of image. It has the look of one of those tiny worlds that are created on stage in the theatre out of just a few props and some artful lighting. Totally convincing, yet actually surrounded by a great black void of nothing. It's the lighting you've used, of course, but there's more than that ... because of the few well-chosen details you have judiciously revealed, the scene is actually more convincing than if you'd let us see everything. That's a technique right from the theatre. And also from strip-tease, of course.
It also recalls those beautiful Flemish and Dutch Masters, where the artist has included plenty of detail but has suppressed or muted most of it, and commanded our full initial attention for the intended point on the canvas. It was done partly with light and partly with meticulous compositional skill, just as has been achieved here.
The viewer is reminded, in looking at the restraint in the way you've put this image together, of the aphorism "Less is More", usually attribited to the architect Mies van der Rohe.
My next thoughts strayed to the location depicted. I have just such a small library; a couple of thousand books, two deep wing chairs, and a discrete LCD screen for the football. It's an oasis. This scene conveys the same feelings for me. Quiet, reassuring; sanctuary.
But the most absorbing aspect for the viewer is to speculate on what the image means. What's it about?
At first I thought it was about death, or more accurately about mortality. The empty chair and the book set aside with the spectacles marking the page is an obvious symbol of an unexpected departure. But is it a permanent departure (i.e. death)?
I think not. There are some clues supporting a happier, more optimistic interpretation. The book is open, not closed. Closed would have been much more symbolic of death. More final. And the pages are fresh - crisp white paper, and only recently fanned open (the book has not slumped into the flattened resignation of abandonment). There is definitely an
"I'll be back, and soon" look to this scene.
Contrast it with this equally absorbing photograph:
On the face of it, these two images have a lot in common. But they actually have quite different meanings. JPR's photograph is unequivocally about mortality. Nobody is coming back to sit in his chair.
Your chair, however, is about something else entirely. I think it's about sanctuary and self-sufficiency. It's about understanding and preserving the values that truly matter in life, and regularly returning to those things as necessary. Those values are represented here by the comfortable, lovingly-worn chair; the books; the honest simplicity of the floor; even by the fact that the spectacles worn here are not those used outside this place. This place even has its own costume.
So, it's a deceptively simple scene constructed from just a few visible elements (and some invisible elements), and yet it is filled with buried allegorical treasure. I'm happy to have been the first pirate to have dug it up.
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