What is this a photograph of? Photos can hold so many details. Responding to what they describe can create many different meanings, many of them (all of them?) personal.
For me this is photograph of blossoms.
This is the service lane beside the apartment building I lived in for many years in Vancouver's West End. I travelled it often. I took photos of this orange trumpet vine on several occasions trying to capture its personality, its exuberant colour and shapes. None of those shots bubbled up into this collection (I think only two of my flower studies did, and they appear much further down on this list), but here, these blossoms assert themselves and become laden with meaning... in the company of a person.
That person is a bottle-picker trying to make their living by collecting refundable bottles and cans. If you look closely, you can make out the recycling bin they knocked over behind the locked door of this building's garbage storage area. This gate is the genteel front of our war on the poor. You can also see the tool this resourceful person is using to get to the nickels and dimes the good recyclers of this building have decided they don't need returned to their household budgets.
I did not frame the photo to position the trumpet blossoms above this person, not consciously. But they were there and the way they hover exactly and only over this person, and the way their dropped blossoms surround the person on the ground, speaks to me of a blessing being bestowed unawares on this person. The trumpets are animate and lean down to draw our attention to this person's worthiness. To me, this photo works like one of Jesus' or Gautama's stories.
This moment is especially resonant for me because this alley was my regular route to my Welfare office and the ATM where I cashed my disability cheques. I have lived below the poverty line most of my life but have been lucky enough to have never been homeless. There but for the grace of God go I.
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19.05
