Opening II (Emptiness)
In this area, interweaved with the bending and overturning roads, abrupt elevation changes, and culs-de-sac, the increasing sense of economic hardship added another layer of limitation. He hadn’t intended to look at space in its social and economical relevance, but to unnerve some of its oneiric possibilities and particularities. He nevertheless felt all were eventually intertwined.
Reaching the top of the ascending road he found the sign ‘Dream Center’. Puzzled by its unusual location and shabby aspect –– and the sudden eruption of irony –– he soon realised it related to the building on the left which is, anecdotally, a charity-run shelter for homeless people. For him the ‘Dream Center’ sign came as a kind of discovery, like an apparition. And, more than the flimsy irony, it was the strange effect of signalisation that attracted him, as if that was saying: be careful, here dreams! His eyes moved to the left, to the strange totem-like pylon whose shadow pointed back at him.
Looking at the image, I am struck by its emptiness, or its effect of vacuum. The elements included in the photograph appear disparate, unrelated. Yet, they seem to take on a dance and form this circle from the sign to the palm tree, the Spanish-style building, the pylon, its shadow, the road, and back to the sign. The photograph expresses a set of possible relations. It encompasses for me a multitude of impressions, contradictions, possibilities, and movements. With a void as a background, the image with its compositional elements forms an event.
Chronological time cannot answer to those events. The paradox of this image is that even though it expresses an immense void, or emptiness, it is also very noisy, agitated. A lot is happening but outside time. Time is stretched, as one is taken within the circular movement of the image.
