Photo-Essay

Tuesday, 10 October 2023, 10:34

Street Photography

I didn't write this essay about the characters in the photograph, but both the photo and the essay were created on the same magical train ride...

 

On the train from Callela to Barcelona, i was sitting on the left side, opposite of the big window on the right which faced the sea. I listened to the kind of piano music that involuntarily takes you into a romanticising spiral. In front of the window was sitting an old couple. I was consumed by two details. The first was the lady's caramel colored prescription glasses with thick frames that accentuated her eyes in an admirable way. The second was her husband's very faded heart tattoo on his lower arm. It was an outline of a heart with an arrow and text on the inside. It was so smudged that the two or three words were no longer legible. It told a story of a lifetime and it hinted at what his youth was like. I deduced that he must have been a romantic, or foolish. At one of the next stops the couple left, and it felt like they had never been there. It is thought-provoking how strangers occupy our thoughts for a few minutes and then fade into the television static of our reality, until they dissapear.

As the window's frame was no longer occupied by their silhouettes, I had the view to myself. The piano got more intense as I felt a deep sense of appreciation towards the beauty of our world. I felt a heavy and wonderful ball of water gather in my chest, wishing to turn into tears of appreciation. I indulged in the magnificence of the ordinary and the human and the natural. Trains are powerful places, if you only indulge. As I was gazing at the view, the sea's glimmers went from clustered to scattered. Each glimmer was individually visible rather than a part of a whole. I focused at it so intensely that the glitters started looking like bullets because of the relativity of our moving train. They each were half yellow and half white. It felt as though the sun had spilled some of its glitters onto the sea and they were skipping on it playfully. Enchanted by it, I gazed until my eyes were overhwelmed by the light. After all, I was staring directly at the sun's reflection in the blue mirror.