Athens | April | 2025
Can’t really say why. But this image has fascinated me for quite sometime.
It is worth theorising a little…
So below I will muse about two possible reasons for this photograph.
A Hypothesis #1
In the last few years we have been living in incredibly unstable; not to mention horrific times in the long line of horrors our world has faced through history. It just seems that following so quickly after those precious few years, where we began to believe that things were finally progressing (at least on certain fronts, such as civil rights and so on) we are now faced with an apparent total reversal to the awful days leading to the Second World War.
Fascism, a political and moral stain on history, has made an apparent worldwide come back with a vengeance. I am horrified and scared for the future of our world. Of course let’s not forget the ever hanging sword of the environmental disaster that is unfolding fast and pushing us all the closer to the ultimate Mass Extinction Event.
All this makes for severe and chronic mental health disasters throughout the world.
So… there is that! OR it could be…
A Hypothesis #2
The second possible reason; and without doubt the less catastrophically sourced reason is, that I have, for almost my entire adulthood been a visual artist by inclination and by profession.
This image was originally shot on my tablet looking up from the coffee table in our sitting room, and I fired the shutter accidentally. After triggering the shot I tutted in irritation and then opened the image to delete it. The moment I opened it I fell in love with it.
The space and simplicity of it appealed to the graphic designer as well as the photographer and illustrator in me.
So I thought “Wow I could use this for some sort of layout with text and so on…” So I shot it again on my Nikon.
I don’t know for sure which of these is the real reason. Or indeed if there is another reason entirely. Whatever the case I find this quite calming to look at, so perhaps the reason is not all that important.
A Sort of Conclusion
SO…
I just don’t really know what to say to close this little thought and bring it to a satisfying response. But I have a feeling that some personal situations I have found my self in lately have finally led to me feeling deeply distressed and perhaps, as has been suggested, depressed.
I have only one thing to say about that. I don’t know.
I do know one thing, I am not feeling hugely optimistic right now…
But to reiterate, perhaps it’s the simplicity and calmness of this image that appeals to me right now.
SO my apologies.
Shot on a Nikon D750, 50mm f1.4 (1980s Ai series) at 1/80sec, f5.6, ISO 1600 Manual