anti:freeze

Don't you love the idea of a gaseous envelope? The intimacy and softness of it? That it can be steamed or ripped or cut open? Imagine sliding your finger through the sealed atmosphere. That is close to what an aura feels like. The part that makes epilepsy most interesting, most worthwhile (and most terrifying.)

Where we're at in our lives must have everything to do with how we see this envelope. When I look at the picture, I find myself drawn to the darkness rather then the light.

Keith -

I love the connection you make between points in our lives and how we view images. And I absolutely love it that you are drawn to the darkness. Do you find safety there? Or more risk? Both?

For me, the image is ambiguous. The darkness envelopes the light, which envelopes the little drive through, which envelopes more darkness (behind those boarded windows). So I purposely did not mention lightness or darkness - did not choose to define one or the other as the atmosphere. Somehow, they both create vulnerabilty and risk. (Both being necessary for the other to exist, and both carrying their own questions, unknowns, dangers.) And both darkness and light are part of this drive-through.

Thank you for your comment! I have been trying to understand why I took this photograph, and why it speaks to me, and now I am coming closer ...

K

I think the darkness has to hold both safety and risk. We easily recognize a line that is drawn between the light and the dark, but have a much harder time seeing the lines drawn within the darkness itself. Fear of the dark, the unknown, but also the comfort of being hidden. But in darkness it is often harder to imagine where comfort ends and fear begins?

This morning I found myself thinking of different ways to see this picture. We seem drawn to light much the same way animals might be drawn to a watering hole, where they expose themselves and are vulnerable. I can't help but draw connections between the interactions of people, seeing relationships as nothing more then this constant battle that exists between the light and the dark, the known and the unknown. Where everyone hides other, smaller darknesses behind boarded up windows.

And then there are the brief words you wrote about the picture. Words that seemed to draw their own fine line through unknowns. The mystical quality of aura, an unknown to most, is given to us as light, while those things we can understand, like a chipped tooth and illness and walks along the river, are presented more like the darkness. You "take a break from the bright lights" and retreat.

Mostly though, this picture has me thinking. I like that.

For me in this picture the dark is safety. Like to get anywhere safer you'd have to run the gauntlet of that glare & exposure -- I find myself wanting to duck into the shadow and watch and wait. Maybe I'd want to risk it to get through that door. Or maybe not.