Irina Souiki
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I have always been weak to the implied narrative of the empty chair. As a visual trope, the empty chair has nearly universal appeal. It almost radiates with insinuated tension. It suggests so much, yet admits so little.
But there is a subset of the empty chair, one that substitutes pathos for tension…the abandoned chair. There is no narrative tension to the abandoned chair, no engaged interest on the part of the viewer as to what just happened or what might happen next. We know what happens next. The abandoned chair is all melancholic history. These chairs have served their purpose; they’ve experienced years of use and have been cast aside. The people who sat in the abandoned chair are gone…the families, the employees, the customers, the civil servants, the unknown men and women who momentarily occupied that chair. All gone, one way or another. The chair is no longer useful, no longer comfortable, no longer convenient. In many cases it is no longer really a chair; just the derelict husk of a chair.
Yet there is a forlorn sort of poetics at work in the slow decline of the abandoned chair. Each has its personal history indelibly written on its body. Each scuffed arm, each broken leg or tattered backrest, each coat of paint and each reupholstered cushion is revealing of those who used the chair. The history is there, visibly there, and yet generally only the most recent passages are decipherable. And that’s part of the beauty of the abandoned chair. It reminds us that not all questions can be answered; it reminds us that nothing is permanent; it reminds us that beauty is ubiquitous.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
