Weekly photo challenge – Relic

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The word relic comes from the Latin reliquiae, meaning “remains” or “something left behind”.

In our image-saturated world, where the physical object gives way to its digital representation, the image itself becomes that “something left behind”, a relic of our engagement with the world.

In this image, I have placed three up-ended photos side-by-side. These old kilns at Bendigo Pottery are no longer functional and stand in a museum environment as reminders of how the factory functioned in years past.

My aim in this image is to subvert expectation.  I’m hoping your eyes will search the entire picture plane, rather than just settle on a key object placed according to the rule of thirds. A relic becomes a point of focus.  As such, the context in which the relic was created can sometimes become lost or distorted.  I’d like to re-establish context.

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Series Notes

My approach to these WordPress photo challenges has evolved and seems to be settling into a pattern made up of three layers.

First, there is the challenge’s theme. Second, there is the photographic act. And third, because the resulting posts will sit in my blog, I want to also consider it’s overall theme.

What happens when these three ideas draw towards each other? What might be found at their point of intersection?

Today’s intersection

Our photographs, particularly our travel photographs, are our means of capturing something of an experience.  We know this experience will eventually be changed by all that we do, and become, after that moment

I’m not encouraging people to venerate those photographic slices of the past.  However, I believe they can be useful.

To be useful, they must be revisited.  Just as pilgrims take time out to embark on their journeys, so too we should take time to look back and reflect.  How did we come to be in that place?  What did it mean to us then?  What does it mean to us now?

What did we do, and become, after that moment?

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