Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck playing Stardust
the bass line, chug chug chug chug...
the consolation of watching infinity
in a river flowing, a cloud drifting, a child laughing.
Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck playing Stardust
the bass line, chug chug chug chug...
the consolation of watching infinity
in a river flowing, a cloud drifting, a child laughing.
Do we appreciate a painting more, or let's say at a higher, more sophisticated level, if we paint ourselves? What about music, literature, poetry? At least from a craft point of view it has to be so. Only when we practice a craft ourselves do we have a much better understanding and appreciation of its history, theory, practices, challenges etc.
In my archive I have a set of a dozen photographs by Turkish photographer Fethi Sabunsoy. It was 2003 when he gave them to me, a few years before he passed away in 2007 at the young age of 57. In the 22 years since, I have returned to these prints again and again; like you would open a small poetry book and re-read the same poems that you have read hundreds of times before.
This picture is one of the gems in the set. He took it in 1998, in an old, traditional coffeehouse in Gaziantep, a city in southeast Turkey. Every time I flip through the photos I stop at this one (and many others) and stare at it for a very long time. The wonderful mood, the silent poetry pulls at my heartstrings. And man, the print! Fethi was a first-rate craftsman.
Every time I hold the print, I tend to scrutinise the glasses and ashtrays on the table. The way light has rendered their edges is just so delicate, so sublime!
Then my eye always wanders to the cheap, lonely light switch, dangling from a thin cord that appears to have a knot in it. I'm sure, before pressing the shutter Fethi noticed this switch, saw how it was illuminated by windows perpendicular to each other, rim lighting it from two sides. He possibly even saw this switch as the "punctum" of the picture (this is the first time I said punctum on this blog) and made sure he placed it in front of deep shadow. Again, absolutely delicate and rendered pin-sharp.