IN LOOKING OUT
Blog # 19
Enigmatic, cryptic, perplexing, recondite, arcane, mysterious. Yet also. . . arresting, intriguing, hypnotic, enchanting and tantalising.
We see netting, a rip, a hole, a landscape and a mirror. How can such rudimentary and innocent elements conjure up all of these adjectives? Simple items creating complex reactions.
Enigmatic maybe because the elements are so simple and so straightforward. There is nothing in the photograph that immediately provokes a reaction. There is no apparent subject, no action, no focus of interest. Nobody, yes nobody.
Yet we find that together, working together, simple elements create. They provoke attention. They demand that we look and puzzle, look to find a story.A story seemingly about nothing. No beginning, no middle and no end. Real and yet not real.
Let’s look again.
We appear to be in looking out.
The rip invites this interpretation as does the slightly darker foreground. A tent maybe? Maybe not with that dark framing side. No. Inside is something more substantial, an interior, the interior of a hut, a simple hut? Designed to sit in and look, look out ?
The mirror, is it a mirror? It’s also inside with us but interestingly it appears to have no reflection of our interior. If it’s not a mirror then what is it enclosing? I suspect it’s simply framing the netting that hinders our vision. So maybe this is an empty frame and empty frames are symbolic and metaphorical. They provide interpretations and meanings. There is nothing like a metaphor to excite the imagination as it frames empty space.
What is, or has been, going on inside our niche ? It is certainly ours for we are in it, it encloses us. It is us? We are looking out. Looking out at what? Immediately in front of us a delineated area, marked out, for what? A prospective garden perhaps. Beyond a beach. A beach not yet broken down enough to invite sun-seekers or flung towels. It’s rough, exposed, waiting for the metamorphosis of erosion.
Beyond a ridge, substantially, horizontal and planar, with the appearance of hardy vegetation atop it. The wind restricting the vegetations growth. In fact the whole place looks wild, and ungoverned. Waiting for colonisers, invaders, or what are used to be known as civilisation. Looking through the hole in the netting and to the right, a wave ? A glimpse of the sea and a wave? Are we on the coast?
The aggregate of the image, the totality, is one of absence, of emptiness. It’s as if something has happened here and this is the aftermath. It has the atmosphere of trepidation, we look at it with apprehension. We look at it trying to understand. More questions than answers and I’m sure that is what provokes the need to construct stories, to assist in understanding what’s going on here.
What are the possible stories . . . .
Story 1
Surfers, surfers waiting for the swell. Patient , as surfers have to be, but ready. Ready to pounce when the set, with that special wave, appears in that tiny expanse of sea.
It’s up
The surfers stoked, they run, no time to sweep aside the netting. They blunder on through, the board a scythe . Regardless. The wave, only the wave, matters.
Story 2
Derek had always wanted to set up a home on Dungeness Seafront. He refurbished a Fishermans Hut that has stood the test of time. Low-slung and pitch coated. Here he felt alive, the space, the air and the sea. So alive he started to layout a garden. A particular garden, unique. A survivors garden, immune to the high winds and blown sand.The sand found a way into Derek’s’s hut, he created a net door to ward off the sand. His interiors had to be spotless clean, devoid of dirt and sand.
Derek settled down enjoying the emptiness, standing, staring. Walking for miles. He returned one day with sea-worn slats of wood and sea holly cuttings to find the net door attacked. A stone? A homophobic stone?
Story 3
He Sat.
He was looking out. He expected to see only what he could see. Nothing more, nothing less.
He Sat.
He wasn’t used to anger but anger had created this rip, this rip in the net. Now he can see nothing a little clearer
He Sat.
A thin mat his only comfort, simple food alongside. A spring, some way off, it sated his thirst.
He Sat.
For many hours, indeed days. Perhaps waiting, but certainly not waiting for anything to happen beyond the hole in the net.
He Sat.
His name, Paul. Seeking solitude, seeking enlightenment, seeking redemption.
He Sat.
And then no longer alone, Pemouah had joined him. Pemouah tried to dissuade him of this hermetic life and when rebuffed gave Paul a chunk of dried wood, told him to . . . .
plant it out in the ground marked out in front.Water it every day
Paul did this despite feeling it pointless.
He Sat.
For three years he sat, for three years he watered, for three years he watched.
Miraculously. . . green shoots.
They Sat.
Decades later visitors claimed to have seen a tree and tasted the fruit from it
Yes, we could go on. Stories, many of them. What is wonderful about this photograph is its ability to elicit emotions, to elicit wonder, to provoke the imagination and begin a tale or two.
Lee Miller. Portrait of Space, Desert near Siwa, Egypt 1937
Lee Miller! Well I never. I was convinced it was a beach scene. Your thoughtful analysis led me right up the garden path.