"Hartwig House, Truro, Cape Cod, 1976" by Joel Meyerowitz
Chromogenic Print, printed in 1976, (postcard)
Last Tuesday I finally visited the show "Color Rush: 75 years of color photography in America" at the Milwaukee Art Museum. It was a nice show where different the use of different color processes through the history of XX century photography on the United States where showcased, explored and explained through the work of many of the iconic names that did used color photography (as experiment or as a total medium of work) creating well known -or not- bodies of work.
There was as I mentioned a lot of photography. It was great to see some of the prints from many iconic photographers in person for first time, as it is the case of the photograph "Reaching Out" about the wounded soldiers captured by Larry Burrows, but among the many pleasant surprises, the biggest one I think was for me to see the Cape Cod photographs from Joel Meyerowitz, from who I have seen mostly his street photography work through some of the most chaotic cities you can walk on. From those photographs exhibited (5 or 6), I share this one here (the one above), which it really did moved me. Luckily enough I found postcard with it, which I treasure enough like if it was an original print.
This photograph, which opens his book Cape Light it is so simple but it is loaded with so much emotion that it was impossible to take the eyes away from it. The picture to me is an invitation to look inside yourself as you walk out. The purposely included section of what it seems to be a bedroom it gives it the accent needed to take it away from a simpler game of perspectives and light, to a photograph charged with strong emotions. There is a very neatly made bed with a white cover on it. Did someone has not returned yet and still is expected to do so or someone has just left? Is the picture of a couple on the wall a memory of who once occupied the bed? Are they still there? The fact that as you walk out of the house looking for the door you are presented with that small section of latent reality that takes you in makes the conversation to become (TO ME) about the presence in the absence and vice versa, like Edward Hopper's paintings do; it speaks also about time, being the photograph a representation of the three times: the room on the right as the past, the standing point from where the photo was taken as the present and the door at the end as the future, or is it the other way around, or is it there an real order?, not matter which order you give it, there are times expressed on it to me. In any case, there is also a strong feeling of fragile peace on it. Sometimes I look at it and I can see a kid running inside after opening suddenly the door, sometimes I just can hear the birds and the waves out, sometimes I just feel standing there and missing someone.
Someone asked me once why I like photography so much? and I said that to read a photograph sometimes to me is like writing your own story while reading it. This is one of those strong cases since it has this magnetism that speaks to me a lot and that is why I wanted to share it here.
Martin
