Winter Sketches – part I

Last Updated on August 1, 2016 by Patrick

Winter has come and this is exactly what I wanted: lots of snow! :D I have started a new photographic project for which I gathered images from the field since two years ago. I named it “Winter Sketches”.

In this project, I am looking for going on new photo trips to the essence of winter. The four seasons have their apparent and archetypical characteristics. They invite us to meditation, surely, especially winter, which is meant to be a time of inwardness, introspection. A time in which we balance our results, our values, our deeds and we draw conclusions. This has to be made in silence, with ourselves.

From the most simple forms, ideas, suggestions, to the most complicated, so to speak, until the the snow gives way to the mixed, chaotic forms of Nature, that are apparently symmetrical, harmonious. But why do we consider them asymmetrical in the first place? Isn’t this a rather subjective concept? Doesn’t this depend on the way we look at them?

This is a project which I began a few years ago with making photographs for it. I was always fascinated by winter and it seemed to me the purest time of the year. Maybe it is because it’s a time of recollection, of regathering and its white reminds us of the purity of innocence.

I have spoken about this and I continue to believe that there is no white, nor black for that matter. There are just grayscale tonalities due to the intensities of light.

But snow, I think, must be considered a sheet on which something is created. This sheet is the very canvas on which forms begin to take shape, ideas begin to creep. :)

Great legends have it that life was born in water. I remember the characteristics of this natural element: it is receptive, malleable, flexible, it takes the form of any recipient in which it is poured and it reflects all the information that it receives like a mirror. Water has memory, others say, for it stores information, and recent studies show it. When the “rays of snow” fall on the ground they take the shape of it.

We cannot see what it is. It must be seen from afar, but it still is miniaturized. The first winter sketch takes shape:

Still, something happens in winter. Beneath the blanket of snow the new generations that will feed the earth in spring and summer, are gestated. These preserve their values. It’s kind of like hibernation. :)

From abstract things to the so-called concrete things that can take shape we begin to see a vast desert of snow. I’ve written about this before.

When I was a child I had a feeling of regret when it snowed really hard and everything was covered with this white veil. I asked myself – “My God! What do we do now? How is Nature going to come back after this? How is it going to come back to normal!?”. :) Childish, I know, but still, very interesting. Although a desert is apparently lifeless, a dry and barren wasteland, in fact, in its essence it is not dead but dormant. All its capacities of yielding life lies within it. But we don’t see it. That’s the thing. We are unfortunately convinced only by what we see taking place. Even the great sand deserts of our world have many underground springs. But on the surface, where there is very little water if none at all, they are barren, almost lifeless at first sight, mostly inhospitable, hostile, we could say.

Once the water comes back to its liquid state and the light that animate the values of the earth shines brighter, everything comes back to life and the desert turns into a field full of flowers. :)