Since quite some time I had planned to revisit older images. Yesterday’s train delay, that made me spend a very uncomfortable time in an even more uncomfortable train station at night, finally gave me the opportunity to do this. Besides some tagging in bibble5 (which is not yet as comfortable as I’d wish it to be), I drew out the images for the new gallery “Batticaloa Fences”, which you find here.
And while going through them, I again felt my affection for the place and the images, still strong after the year+ that has passed since then. Regarding the photographs it is based on the strong graphics and textures that some of them have, but also on the content, the situation you must live in to protect your property with flattened oil barrels or fragments of asbestos sheets .
Markus, a wonderful gallery of fences that made me very glad you had the time to bring them together, even if under a much less then perfect situation. There are worlds out there I’ve never had the opportunity to know and understand, people who lives I can only imagine, that’s why I so appreciate the acknowledgements photos such as this evoke.
Thanks for this! It was a great pleasure to view the photographs, they made me feel a calmness which may (or may not) be surprising given the subject matter.
Earl, Juha: thanks for the positive feedback. From your words I get the confirmation that the plurivalent character of the images got transported. It was intended like this: on the one hand the visual qualities of course fascinated me, the colors, the structure, the (most of the times soft) light, but when creating them as well as reviewing them I never lost the connection to the world of the families behind those fences and their state of living. The choice of material and the status of corrosion speak a clear language of their own. And on me, being confronted with it (and all the connected circumstances) for only a limited time, it made an unforgettable impression.
That’s some tangled contraption for the wires. I like it.