A Point of Immutability
It was only a year later he was able to return to the same place and take along the large format camera to the shot he had earlier missed. The place hadn’t changed except that it looked even more neglected than before.
I find it strange how the exterior of the house seems to be taken over by time, following a course of degradation, while the interior stays immutable. In fact, the time of the inside seems separated from that of the outside. There is a sense of paranoia passing through the image, as the exterior takes on a more and more aggressive character.
The house thus marks an enclosed world. We often think of cities as a space of exchange, a multitude of networks that co-exist, along with speed, communication and possibilities. We rarely think of them as spaces of enclosures and stagnation, even less of reclusion. But cities are constituted of concrete walls as well as social, economical and mental ones.
The image generates a mental resistance to time, to passing and irreversible time, which in a way illustrates the psychological layers of the city, pulling closer to the repression, neurosis, depression and reclusion.
