Photographs
The house stood empty on an empty street, soft lights
occasionally displayed. Through the front door, and down an empty hall, with
empty picture frames, and frames turned downward on misplaced display tables,
there is another door. Beyond that door, is a downward staircase, unfinished
wood all the way to the concrete floor below. The boxlike basement reflects its
contents—boxes. It seems that all the empty walls had been stripped away and
piled just over six feet beneath it. Within those boxes—some dampened
cardboard, others neat pine crates, contain small medals and trophies, which
could only belong to a child, haphazardly among three soccer balls, a
basketball, and one American football, all in varying degrees of inflation. Others
contain a tall woman’s clothing, scrubs, and jackets. Others still, the
clothing of a small boy, which could fit up to a young man of 15. A few articles
of medical wear in slim men’s sizes, and a suit.
Yet the most fascinating boxes contain blank
canvases, and unfinished paintings, draped over the sides, long frames jutting
out at unstable angles. And beneath these paintings, lie three eloquent photo
albums.
One contains shots of nature, common trees and grass
and flowers, juxtaposed with known world wonders, waterfalls, dirty streams,
and deserts. Candid photos of strangers, both in comfortable, familiar suburban
neighborhoods, typical Western scenery, still others of those in devastated and
desolate lands, rummaging through rubble. The photographer herself makes but a
couple of sparse appearances in this album, a beautiful young woman with a mess of wild,
but tightly wound black curls, the clothes she wears indicating a traveler’s
comfortable and functional wardrobe. In one hastily shot image, she appeared to
be clothed in a nurse’s uniform. The images in this album may have some sort of
overarching theme, if one were to take his or her time flipping through it;
they were not unlike the striking abstract paintings. Tragic and euphoric,
chaotic and breathtaking, but incredibly human, and very real, but with a very
specific purpose, to specific individuals.
The second album is thicker than the first, its pages
crammed with images that, while still beautiful, were significantly less
formal. The woman appeared in many more of these pictures, often accompanied by
a similarly young man, only a few inches taller than her, his sandy hair shaved
close to his head. Some of the settings in the first album were shared with
those in the second album. There was clear difference between when one took a
photo of another, and when they were pictured together. There were very few
shots of each individual. The album also featured captions, such as: “Soren and I in Morocco, 1988!”, scrawled
in barely legible, small, cursive script, beneath an image of the young couple
in the backdrop of an African sunrise. The photographs were interspersed with
quotations and torn portions of unsent and blank postcards. The last image in
this album was a single, unsent wedding invitation.
Further beneath, is the most recent album. The couple
was present in only a few images now, the only consistent presence being first,
an infant, and later, a gangly young boy with shaggy dark brown hair. He was
pictured in soccer uniforms, with a team, from the age of four until he was at
least 16. He was seen with some sort of ball in almost every photograph, and
very few featured him with people other than teammates, or the couple, who had
aged ever-so-slightly. There were photos of him kicking a soccer ball from
behind, action shots, with captions just as present as ever. One page featured
one such action shot, the young boy in his early teens, alongside a browning
image of the man standing in a football uniform, helmet in hand. The caption
read, “(I know it is cliché, but) Like father,
like son…” The boys on the teams kept changing. And a photograph of another
house, or an apartment door, or any variety of housing, would continue to show
up, taking up a single page, every few pages of photographs.
The album ended with many empty pages. The last one
filled was a candid shot of the boy as a young man of 16 or 17 years, wearing a
rare smile, with a joking friend at his side.
Across town, was another home. With yet another
corridor, to another basement, though these stairs were finished, smooth,
glimmering mahogany, at least in texture and color. And this basement was
filled with abandoned toys, a rocking chair, a dollhouse, Lego sets, plastic
tubs of a long-forgotten childhood…
No comments:
Post a Comment