Nature morte 162/365
*Jilltoo
What is a photographer if not a means to reflect?
Am animal skull. A mirror. A white cloth.
I see a former lover who was ecstatic when he encountered a dead sheep on a lonely footpath. The skull he took home and nailed above his door. The hoof he detached with a wrench and saved to make the base for a candlestick. A ovine femur lay on the table by the front door – he would enter the house with a whistle, throw his keys at them and the bone, more often than not, would oblige and catch them.
I see a white cloth used by a housemate to wrap my dead cat, after she had tenderly washed and dried him and laid him out in an orange crate. She watched over him the whole night, behind closed curtains in our best front room and instructed our friends to drop by one at a time to pay their respects. We buried him on Boxing Day, she dressed in black and spoke a few tear-choked words as I bit my tongue. We dug and dug and dug a hole, and when she judged it deep enough she laid him inside as I wondered if my cat’s shroud was improvised from the stack of sheets in my bedroom cupboard. Or if he was ever my cat at all.
I see a mirror in an old ballet school. I brought it home and would gaze deep into the silvered cracks, hoping that some essence of Swan Lake would be reflected back into me. My ballet career was cut short, aged eight, through lack of perseverance. After one performance as a milk maid in an end of term show, I hung up my ballet shoes.The surface of the mirror crazed over. Years later, when I took one last look I could see myself, dim and far away, a shadow of the dancer I had never been.
The photographer reflects – that’s her job. Ours is to interpret any way we choose.
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, Debra Broughton and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
