Beauty real, faded or imagined. Illusion, symbol, mystery, prophetic.Yes, I've been a tourist, a stranger in a strange land...but what a land. A place of awesome majesty, riches, poverty and desolation; flights of soaring hymnals in vision, dreaming spires, screaming tyres; the rise and Promethean audacity of Man creating both magnifence and monstrosity. The overarching might and colossal impact of Imperial Rome, the vast power of medieval and Renaissance men and cities and republics, Babel-like towers rising and toppling....
I find it extremely hard to convey Italy. Partly because of its immensity, beauty and excellence...but particularly for me because there are the groanings accompanying the signs of the End of the Age. I'm in danger of being in a unique position here if I'm not careful: that of alienating any readership before a blog has even got off the ground. Yet I would be lying if I said that I just had a nice time taking lots of piccies. each time I've visited Italy, I've felt that God wanted to show me so much about the real nature of Him and His creation, about the position of man in the world and about our relationship(or otherwise) with Him. The thing is, the reality of this seems so vast, and my powers of understanding so limited, that I could only "treat" this sense through a panoply of symbols and images.
Before I go on any further, I'll probably bring about a sigh of relief from some of you by assuring you the following: I will not be posting every Italy image and gving an artistic exposition here! I'd think that 1400+ images would leave you either catatonic or with a Mekon-style brain extrusion.
BUT...you can find my Italy photo galleries here:Doverow's Italy Galleries It's a safe and nicely laid-out site..and the photos are reproduced larger than within this blog. I'll even give you a few seconds to nip over, have a quick peek and bookmark it......
.....OK?
The 2 images above, by the way?
The first image was taken in Rome: I was taken with the almost androgynous-looking nature of the subject and the whole suspension of disbelief that is generated by a successful illusionist. The guy was flicking, twisting and manipulating the "crystal ball", balancing it gyroscopically, then getting it to travel against gravity up his arm. He was dressed so as to give a suggestion of woodland mysticism, with his hair gathered in a sort of twig and branch arrangement. For me..or for the symbolic "meaning" I wanted to impart via the image...I wanted to suggest the illusory or false nature of a self-perpetuating Creation, suggesting further that there is a deceitful spirituality at work to blind us to the reality of a God who is separate from, transcendant to, His creation.
Or, of course, you can see the picture as a snapshot of a street entertainer..which is equally valid, as it'd be against the spirit of free will if I just heavy-handedly "told" the viewer what they have to see.
The second image is at a special place, San Miniato di Monte..just a couple of hundred yards(or metres, if you like new money) above the Piazzale Michelangelo, Florence. It is place that looks down on the beauty of the city, set in the natural bowl of the landscape. I often think of this view as being like Jesus looking down at Jerusalem, weeping for its fallenness, its beauty and awaiting the "New Jerusalem" in the restoration of all things. Like a bridegroom awaiting the uniting with his bride.
Here I wanted to allude to both life and death: the solitary figure is "seeking the living among the dead" perhaps, or contemplating the journey of life to death(and even to life beyond this). There is wide space around her, indicating vulnerability or emphasising her apparent aloneness. She seems to see only what is immediately before her eyes...yet we are aware of the "bigger picture" quite literally: a beautiful place, where the lines of the composition all lead towards. The fact that there is no visible way of getting from the foreground to the background, from death to life, serves to emphasise the photograph's themes.
And there we are. If you'd like any more details about the photographs(as techy or non-techy as you wish), please either go to the Italy Gallery or ask here. And of course, if you'd like more, and you would like my explanation/exposition too, then please say.
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