“Thought is patchy and material. It does not find magical closure or even seek it, perhaps because it’s too busy just trying to imagine what’s going on”.
“The act of description, then, is a peering, accidental glimpse of what matters” (Kathleen Stewart, 2007, p. 5; 2016, p. 31).
A light that tries to write
“In the form of photographic images, things and event are put to new uses, assigned new meanings, which go beyond the distinctions between the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false, the useful and the useless, good taste and bad” (Susan Sontag,On photography, 1977, p. 153).
Photo; photo-graph, a light that is written. Essay; a writing genre which attempts. Photo essay; a light that tries to write – perhaps even to shimmer as Deborah Bird Rose (2018) might say. This photo essay brings together some thinking and wondering I was doing while wandering on far away on the other side of the world at the end of December 2022 and during January 2023. With the words of Susan Sontag (1977, p. 153) swimming around in my head, suggesting that a photograph does not simply reproduce the real but recycles it; and the sense-abilities of Kathleen Stewart urging me to pay slow attention to what’s going on “out of the corner of the eye” (2007, p. 71), “just to see what happens. Even if it’s not much” (2007, p. 120), I tried to take one photograph each day of something that “jumped” and to wrap some writing around it.
Searching for words that shimmer in response to the light writing of photographs, this essay came to life. Using an iPhone app called Journi, these words try to respond in short bursts to that which sits behind, beyond, and between the moment, the memory, and the meaning-making. Journi does not give space to write more than 500 characters per entry and in many ways they are sets of “hundreds” (more or less), and there is something quite liberating about such beautiful constraint. Each piece recalls the rhythm and refrain of something I felt hanging in the air around the scene depicted in each photo; things that caught me by surprise and sent me spinning in that moment to a sense-ability heavy with feeling – feelings that darted and dashed their beauty, injustice, loneliness, yearning and love with wild abandonment and no regard for how they might fall onto the page. And so, here it is – a photo essay in two parts shimmering as it attempts to catch the light, knowing that it too is not what it is not yet.
29th December, 2022: Borgo Angelico, Roma
When everyone is sleeping, she takes a small can of red paint and a small brush – a spray can won’t do – and inscribes the words that define her. She wanders for awhile, trying to decide which ancient wall to make her canvas. For as long as she has been alive she has sought ways to make her mark on the world. Two words are enough, for she knows that sometimes adding signals to signals is the shortest route to give poetry a road.
She doesn’t need a tag, it’s the style of script she is interested in. The out of sight blank wall on Borgo Angelico, crumbling with age at its roots, is the perfect place for her to recreate a her vision of herself once more for she is not there yet. Her brush scrapes across the stone, embracing the grit with grace and humility. There is nothing uniform about the lettering, she laughs softly, how could there be? Then stands back to admire her work. She likes the way the “E” is everything and nothing it should be. With a final glance, she turns the corner and is gone.
30th December, 2022: Via Nicola Salvi, Roma
SOS, a universal cry for help in dark times, positioned perfectly outside a monument which glorified human suffering. She knows she should stand in wonder at the amphitheatre and she does – for a second. It’s size, structure, and it’s service as a stadium for the display of power in ancient Roma is indeed a sight to see.
Last time she was here, she had laced up her running shoes and stood anxiously at its feet waiting to join thousands of others in a different kind of sport. By the time she had finished four and a half hours later, the soles of her feet were desperate for some salvation, but unlike the gladiators, slaves and wild animals who had passed through its gates thousands of years before her, no blood of hers was aged.
The dust has settled and the stains are gone, but deep down in her bones she senses the cruelty and horror this imperial arena holds. She stands in silence and remembers.
31st December, 2022: Museo Chiaramonti, Viale Della Galea, Roma
She wanders through the Grand halls of the Vatican, the centre of Catholic power where Popes reside and the Papal patriarchy preside over the lives of millions around the world. The gardens, buildings and walls glitter with wealth and she starts searching for women, aside from the Madonna, with a seat at this table.
On her way to the Sistene Chapel, she stumbles across the statue of the Roman goddess Juno Sospita (the Saviour). A goatskin drapes her body and she is armed. The daughter of Saturn, sister and wife to Jupiter, mother of Mars, Juno was the queen of the gods in ancient Roma. The label describes her as warlike and the protector of Roman people, particularly women.
She later finds out Juno has three names – Sospita (saviour), Lucina (light) and Moneta (money). As Sospita she watches over pregnant women, as Lucina she brings children into the light, and as Moneta Juno keeps an eye on funds. People push past her, and like so many other women, Juno’s story goes unnoticed.
1st January, 2023: Corner of Via Delle Scienze and Via Saraceno, Pisa
It is the first day of the new year and the winding streets of Pisa slumber in a thick fog. Their footsteps respect the quiet and they walk silently across the cobblestones holding hands. They relish this moment before the world wakes, it is their favourite time of day.
Arriving at the end of via Santa Maria they look ahead at the Cattedrale de Pisa and wonder where the tower is. It is only then they realise she has been leaning towards them the entire time. Resiliently and unapologetically holding her ground even though gravity would suggest otherwise.
They stand still and stare. There is no one else around and they can see her fully and free in all of her perfect imperfection. Built in 1372, she started leaning five years later, the shallow ground unable to hold her but she has come to love her tilting curves. She is not as tall as they imagined but in the quiet pre-dawn mist, her bells ring out and she claims her space with a haunting dignity that defies her seeming demise.
2nd January, 2023: Fondamenta Rio Marin, Venezia
She spends the day roaming around the winding streets on a bitterly cold day, quite the contrast to last time she visited so many years ago. She wraps her hands around a warm coffee instead of prosecco in Piazza San Marco. She takes a half an hour gondola ride, breathing in the keen sounds of this famous canal city from below instead of the fragrant melodies of a salon opera from above, not noticing the stench slowly rising. She admires Italian leather bags and murano glass bowls inside windows but doesn’t stop to go inside. Her son buys a dashing Italian beret and the hat maker declares, “Bello!”
Soon it is time to leave and they soon become hopelessly lost, turning and twisting down tiny streets and across bridges that all begin to look the same. Walking over Rio Marin she finds herself in front of a large piece of Qwerty graffiti and thinks poetic. Little pellets of frustration are spat out, hitting her left, right and centre; and she too begins to hurt. She trails along behind wishing to remain lost alongside the woman on the wall.
3rd January, 2023: Lungarno della Secca Vecchia, Firenze
She waits on the edge to cross the road and watches the world of Firenze race by. In this city built of Medici money, Michael Angelo’s magnificence and marbled cathedral tombs, the present moves out of time with itself and wanders willfully into the past. She tries her best to keep pace but she is distracted by the little fast red cars and loses herself walking a different path.
She prays in Lady of the Madonna Chapel in the Santa Croce instead of Dante’s grave. She thinks about the human suffering portrayed in Michael Angelo’s incomplete slave sculptures instead of marvelling at the grand specimen of David. She cannot remember how many years ago she and her mother made their way to and from here instead of focussing on the way back to their car. She falls into a fog of longing for that day in the sun instead of this day in the shade and realises that like streets and buildings around her, she is old and stone cold. A red fiat beeps and the light turns green, she moves forward.
4th January, 2023: Via de Monna Agnese, Siena
She loves this medieval town on a hill preserved by a 1000 year old wall in central Tuscany. It is one of those places you stumble across not really knowing what you might find. She found the Piazza del Campo, famous for the Palio horserace, which takes place twice yearly. She found winding cobble stone viales, fresh espresso and plum tarts, and pizzas with abundant crusts. She also found the Duomo de Siena, a gorgeous and commanding gothic cathedral built in the 1200s.
She left religion long ago but did not abandon her sense of spirit in the world grounded in love, care and compassion. Stepping inside she was overwhelmed by the magnificence, beauty and steadfastness of the Duomo. She found herself standing in the Chapel of the Madonna with a statue of St Peter carved by Michael Angelo watching over the altar. She knelt down, bowed her head and remembered the women of her heart – her mother and grandmothers. With tears streaming down her face, she lights a small red candle in memory.
6th January, 2023: Calle de Alfonso VII, Madrid
A Montezuma Cyprus radiates her sovereignty over El Retiro Park in the afternoon winter sun and casts a 400 year old shadow. She is the only one of her kind standing and the Catalogue of Unique Trees of the Community of Madrid, says she is the oldest singular tree in this centuries old city. Tucked away in the French style section of the gardens, she was planted in 1630 and has watched its heart turned asunder as the world marks time around her. She is a 52 metre pale green tower, with gnarled bark and feathered branches that weep towards the roots that have before and will sustain her far beyond this moment.
Today she rests on the glowing frame of her elaborate candelabra and watches a mother and her 17 year old son approaching, the two together a little too far away for her to hear what they are saying. Their words reach her as whispers of awe and wonder, and will embrace with hope for survival long after they are gone. She bends back in the breeze and continues to breathe.
7th January, 2023: VC. de San Cristóbal, Madrid
The suffragette shades of purple for loyalty and dignity paired with green for hope on the shop facade tell her she has arrived at Librería Mujeres, Madrid’s famous women’s bookstore. Established in 1978 with the motto, “Books don’t bite, neither does feminism”, they specialize in books written by women from around the world, feminist books, books for women and children’s books that aren’t sexist.
She can not remember the last time she stepped inside a women’s bookstore, and she feels a little giddy as the sweet vanilla scent of words printed on paper rushes to fill her up. All of the books are in Spanish and she gasps at the vast array. There is an entire shelf dedicated to Virginia Woolf and she asks if they have a copy of “A room of one’s own”. The attendant proudly announces they have their very own edition, smiles and hands a copy to her, “Horas y Horas published it in 2003, the text is explicitly translated into the feminine, which is important for this book don’t you think?”
8th January, 2023: Calle Arenal, Madrid
She sits by herself in a small cafeteria in the centre of Madrid, watching the world go by. It is almost six o’clock at night and the streets are just starting to darken. She has been walking for hours amidst a sea of people. She stepped outside into the grey and cold day to find an umbrella to shelter her from the rain. She found two, one in black for the boys and one in pink for her. She likes to think she is the kind of person who cares for those she loves.
The more she walks, the more she doubts herself and her capacity to care – perhaps even to love. So she keeps walking, hoping to catch a glimpse of that caring woman she once knew. She sees old couples holding hands, she sees Ukranian folk singers busking, she sees Spanish toddlers throwing tantrums, she sees so many people in search of something more inside the warmth of shops.
She begins to cry softly, it is no use – she is nowhere to be seen and she resigns herself to returning home alone without care and without love.
Some writers I am thinking with
Deborah Bird Rose. (2018). Shimmer: Flying fox exuberance in worlds of peril. Edinburgh University Press.
Kathleen Stewart. (2007). Ordinary affects. Duke University Press; as well as her inspiring piece (2016). The point of precision. Representations, 135(1), 31-44.
Susan Sontag. (1977). On photography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Oh sweetheart … that last sentence made me cry. From one of the most caring, loving women i know. i get it though. Sometimes … well. Thankyou for sharing a tiny bit of your holiday … it was really lovely to be in Italy with you xxx