Sweden

Weekly Photo Challenge: Simple

Last week I had to suppress the urge to take a picture of someone who looked anything but simple. While taking the subway my eyes where all over the place. Looking around, but not seeing anything; till I noticed these big sized leather boots. They definitely had to be of a woman, but their scale was surpassing any normal sized shoe of a male. And so my eyes scrolled up slowly to see what kind of person would match such unusual sort of shoe.

She was a very big woman; besides being tall, she also had an enormous bosom and a matching waist. She still looked slim, though, because of this extraordinary coat she was wearing. Its shape reminded me somewhat of a German army coat. It reached down to her ankles and was tightly worn in her waist. The fabric was of a soft felt in a light beige colour. At all the coat’s exits black accessories reached out: those big leather boots weren’t the only remarkable things.

Her hands were hidden in black leather gloves with iron studs; her neck was masked by a black turtleneck; a black leather suitcase rested next to her. I noticed a golden watch that peeped out between the sleeve of her coat and her leather hand glove and after some time of taking her in I also saw a slim golden necklace draped around her neck. Her face reminded me somewhat of Lady Di, she had something nineties about her. Perhaps it was her shortly cut hear with copper highlights, that gave me that impression, but at the same time she seemed totally extra-temporal, not from the past, nor from the present or future.

The most remarkable thing of it all was the posture she was standing in the whole ride. It resembled the posture in which Roman emperors would immortalize themselves in marble or stone. It was a gracious contrapposto pose in which she was standing on one leg while the other was carefully resting behind her, as if she was walking. I had a hard time trying not to stare too much, but she was quite an appearance. The camera that was in my bag push itself into my conscious, but I found it very rude to take a picture. So it stayed inside my beg and I tried (for the first time in my life) to make a mental image, to imprint her into my memory so she would remind me of the extraordinary way people can be.

Sometimes the simplest of things can be quite extraordinaire in a certain context. Like the simple necklace around the woman’s neck, or the stones on the image. They are nothing more but stones, but laid down in a certain way they become something more than that. The stones are almost a mythical or spiritual experience; the necklace becomes a tiny detail that blends in with the rest to make the whole appear like something out of this world (or time). I love these details and I love how a context can change it all.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Possibility

Old school mail can make me very happy. As a child I used to correspond with my best friend after she moved to the other side of the city. To me that seemed to be like the other side of the world. We wrote about our little adventures at school and the stuff that occupied our seven or eight year old minds. But over time the letters became less frequent and eventually stopped. She still crosses my mind every now and then. She will always be my first best friend and I’ll remember her as my first and only penfriend. It’s a shame people don’t write each other paper letters anymore. E-mail is of course very convenient, quick, and easy but the personal touch seems to be lost in the process. I always look forward to receiving postcards from my friends and families holiday destination.
During my own vacation last summer I came across these mailboxes. All the houses of this little Swedish village had there mailbox placed together at the side of the street. I like to wander about the kind of person behind the boxes. What they look like, how they spend there days, what kind of mail they would receive. The possibilities are endless…