The lightened plane of conversation
photo Ton Zijlstra, license CC BY NC SA

During the same 2013 trip to Barcelona as yesterday’s photo, I took this shot. My father and I were walking past the Barcelona Design Museum on our way to Torre Agbar. I took this photo through the windows at the front of the building, through to the other side of the building, where at the back of the museum people were sitting on the steps leading to a pool. I very much like the division in different planes, much like a Mondriaan, but then without his primary colors, and much more understated, yet with three people conversing in the brightest part surrounded by lines.

Now that we haven’t been able to travel much and the daily scenery isn’t much different from day to day, I’ve taken to browsing through my Flickr photo archive where I keep over 30.000 photos of the past 16 years. Last week I printed a number of photos to put in the frames on the window sills of my home office. I am posting some of them here this week. This one I did not print, for now, but it is on my longlist.

Fatal Fake
photo Ton Zijlstra, license CC BY NC SA

Wherever I go I tend to take photos of street art that catches my eye. I like the random encounters with creative expression when you stroll through a city, and how they’re add-ons to an environment that wasn’t meant to welcome them. In March 2013 I visited Barcelona together with my father. Two years before his death but already ill he invited me on this city trip meant as an opportunity to bridge some of the distance between us. We talked and explored the city, we enjoyed the food and wine. My photos from the trip are a colourful mixture of Gaudi architecture and street art. The image of the Rolleiflex-camera above, this one branded ‘Fatal Fake’ (which might be a reference to the game of that name), jumped out to me because of the colors, the rust and different tones of red, plus how the holes in the metal above make it look like it was ripped from a notepad.

Now that we haven’t been able to travel much and the daily scenery isn’t much different from day to day, I’ve taken to browsing through my Flickr photo archive where I keep over 30.000 photos of the past 16 years. Last week I printed a number of photos to put in the frames on the window sills of my home office. I will be posting some of them here this week.

Some links I thought worth reading the past few days