Introspection

BACKWARD (THE MAZE OF MEMORY)

The furthest I have, so far, gone back into my photography-related childhood memories are the one day journeys with my uncle and aunt to the canals between Brussels and Charlerois. I was then in the first years of my primary school. My aunt and I would make company to, or rather, distract my uncle who went angling in those rustic spots. For some reason, I have never forgotten the pictorial attraction of the tree-lined canals, although I was a boy just scouting the trails and daydreaming about cowboys and Indians, without showing any explicit interest in the pleasures of that Impressionist landscape. So, almost as soon as I became concerned with aesthetics, I realized the effect this scenery had had on my visual upbringing. But there was something else I saw on those outings that also imprinted itself on my mind. This image, nevertheless, slipped my memory and withdrew into my subconscious from where it kept affecting me for many years....until the day my eyes and my mind opened up and brought it all back... The unexpected discovery came in the shape of a brochure for a famous landmark of this region;  [images-1]  the canal-lock of Ronquieres, “where the barges go on wheels” and negotiate a rise of 70 or so metres. The booklet describing the state-of-the-art lock built in 1968, so amply illustrated with photographs of that and other neighbouring locks, and with such a dominant ratio to text, that one could easily mistake it for a photography book, had found its way into my parents’ library more than twenty years ago owing to the educational enthusiasm of my aunt. Ever since I would occasionally browse through it, but always only to reminisce about those carefree days or so I thought. A couple of years ago, however, while going through it for the same reason I realised for the first time the ‘art’ (in inverted commas as I find the term obsolete, misleading and inappropriate, but I use it for lack of a better, and accepted, term) aspect of the photographs. It occurred to me that I may have kept returning to this booklet not merely because of my yearning for the past, but also because I saw there the visual expressions that I wanted to emulate, or that I simply found appealing. Having made this connection, it did not take me long to figure out another early source of my visual inspiration: the photographic illustrations of cities  [images3]  in an encyclopedia published in the 1960’s. As a child, I often used to satisfy my thirst for knowledge by going through the volumes of this encyclopedia. Flicking through the pages in search of some interesting text, I would pay particular attention to images as tell-tale signs as to what to read, and invariably my gaze would be drawn, more than anything else, by photographs of towns, that seemed to be taken in similar weather conditions. Yet this source of inspiration could have easily gone unrecognized were it not for the canal-lock brochure, as all I had been able to muster as a possible explanation was my attraction to the atmosphere of a hot summer early afternoon in deserted streets, with the intense heat accounting for the absence of people. Another image, more or less in the same vein, that I also got to know through this encyclopedia, was De Chirico’s 1914 painting “The Enigma of a Day”. But, as with the photographs, I was unable to see or feel what lay beneath the surface appeal of this image and consequently had never paid any particular attention to this inclination of mine or its causes. 

Now that I had discovered what affected me visually since childhood, I wished to find answers to two more questions: why was I at all susceptible to this imagery, and why from such an early age? By way of fortune, a year later, I made a big step towards a possible explanation after my visit to Egypt, where I had gone for a short but vital journey after a few years of avocational but determined research on the cultural origins of Western civilization. Having never found any books dealing with this matter I took pleasure in looking for any possible leads in art and history books, coupling them with the experience from my travels, and trying to figure out the answer myself, at least tentatively. The need for this minor investigation was born during my visit to Crete when I was astonished and puzzled by the grandeur and subtlety of the Minoan culture. Some aspects of Minoan civilization I found to be undoubtedly superior to the achievements of the Greeks and Romans. The claims of certain theories, or mis-theories, about Crete being Atlantis could be easily understood when surrounded by this marvellous heritage. Where did it all come from, I asked myself and, without much delay, Egypt sprang to mind as the likeliest answer. Back in London, I rushed back to my books on the Nile dynasties and other relevant subjects, hoping to find clues that would confirm my insights. Having now approached the study of the ancient Egypt as a possible origin of several European civilizations, I started seeing the connections quite clearly and easily. There were plenty of signs strewn around in books and museums showing hypothetical and explicit influences of Egypt on the Minoan, ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine cultures. The last three being already recognized as the cradles of Western civilization, Eastern Europe included, it did not take much thinking to suggest that the civilization stemming from the valley of the Nile could be described, in turn, as an even older, if not primordial, source of Western culture.

On the other hand, the library research I had undertaken before my visit to Crete allowed me to notice the considerable discrepancy existing between photographs, found in travel or archeological books, and first-hand experience. This observation made it indispensable for me to go and see in situ the temples of the Upper Nile, which drew most of my attention amongst Egyptian monuments. The decision having been taken, I was about to book the tickets when destiny conspired, for better or for worse, and prevented me from going to Egypt; and instead took me to the Canary islands. Nearly a whole year passed before I finally managed to make the journey to Luxor. But, on arrival, my expectations, if anything, were surpassed. The magic of the place was simply overwhelming. Still, there was one bitter disappointment. Although my visit was without any photographic ambition, I took a camera simply for recording purposes but the resulting colour photographs taken during the journey fell rather short of the sensations I had there. Bearing in mind the ‘discrepancy’ effect that brought me to Luxor in the first place, I should not and, indeed, did not expect much of the photographs, but was still utterly surprised to see how drastically they had failed.. Fortunately, I shot a few black-and-white rolls as well, out of which only two photographs seemed to have captured some of ancient Egypt’s essence . This, however modest, output proved to be sufficient, as the two images unexpectedly linked up with a couple of photographs [images-2] I had taken at the Belgian canal-lock edifice a few months earlier. The uncanny similarity made me realize, after going again through the Ronquieres brochure, that the whole canal-lock complex was in fact ‘neo-pharaonic’ in style, and far more authentic, for that matter, than the similar public projects in Egypt. But, more importantly, it was obvious that I had come full circle having rejoined my primary, and subconscious, inspiration from childhood. It took me over twenty years to make the visual statements that reflected impressions set in my mind when I was a child and to understand how the relatively brief contact with this edifice in Belgium and the subsequent occasional browsing of the brochure substantially altered and influenced my visual character. This enlightenment, however, did not provide me with the answer I set out to find but just added more weight to my search for the origin, and possibly the purpose, of my predisposition for this visual language.