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Primaeval forests
Streams and pools of water in deep, dark forests heighten their primaeval atmosphere. It takes my thoughts back to ancient times, hundreds of millions of years ago, when life originated on our planet; life that slowly evolved since then. In the right corner of the photo one can see a part of my own shadow.…
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Congeniality
Girl takes picture of little red flowers against green leaves. Fine flowers. Fine girl. Her attentive look perceives colour, life, beauty in a tiny detail of nature. Her gesture reveals a modest, sensitive mind. And I ? I see the outstretched arm, lovely arm, fathom the scene at a glance and perpetuate the moment. Two…
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Coincidence
I walk under a porch towards a square and see a tree. The porch neatly frames the tree. A woman crosses the square and something I can’t see catches her eye. She slows down, stops, one foot in front of the other, and takes a picture. My eye, the woman, the tree: three points in…
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ENOIKIAZETAI
In the spring of 2013 I happened to stay for a day or two in Livadia, a medium-sized town in Greece, in the vicinity of Mount Parnassos. I had time to explore the city and it struck me that the cafes and terraces were teeming with people, young and old. “They don’t let themselves get…
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Non-objects
My criticism of the large number of mirror works by Anish Kapoor in last week’s post, doesn’t do him justice sufficiently. He has made other, different works that deserve attention. Nevertheless I start here again with a distorting mirror work. Kapoor has named it a Non-Object, a title that fits many of his works and…
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Distorting mirrors
I remember with delight the fun-fair that once a year pitched its tents in the small Dutch town in which I grew up. One of the attractions sometimes was a tent full of concave and convex mirrors in different sizes and combinations that showed the strangest, distorted reflections when one stood in front of them.…
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Mirror images
Apart from confronting us with ourselves, a mirror can reflect objects from a part of the room or space around us that would otherwise not be visible from our point of view. Or it can reflect a side of an object that we would not be able to see without mirror. In the picture of…
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Reflections
I like reflections, and photos that contain reflections. Reflections invite to look more intently and provoke thought – see my earlier posts Floating Baobab and A stick in shallow water. It is probably no coincidence that the word reflection has these two meanings: mirroring or mirror image, and thought or thinking. The reflection of the…
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The time path
At the beginning of this millennium the Swiss city of Neuchâtel laid out a path through time in the nearby woods – Le Sentier du Temps. Its starting point was meant to mark the origin of our planet Earth and the end point our present time. Each step of one meter was equal to one…
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Patriotism
I once was seriously lectured by a young boy in India about my alleged lack of patriotism. Everybody in India always wants to know where you come from. Whenever they heard I was Dutch they would often relate to me the story of how a small boy in Holland had saved his country and people…
καιρός remembered
… the right moment, position chosen, shoot …
καιρός remembered 