Waiting for Tea!

[fahim mohammed]

Street side cafe..Istanbul

Best.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Fahim,

One may ask, "Why on earth would Asher want to write more than "Interesting! Reminds me of my visits to Turkey.” (I think might even have sat at that same center table!) Somehow this ever so ordinary picture is more than that.

This is such a Turkish archetypical scene. Even if just one cup of tea comes, it's on a tray! The turned wood of the chairs reminds me of the many minarets. One would think that at disk they too would be calling for prayers.

Note the tablecloths, with images of smoking bowls and pipes and various figures. I wonder who they are? I like the picture, but why? It hardly has anyone's face clearly shown. No one has a substantial meal. There's no game of chess underway and absent are tourists champing through shots on their digicams. All these would make interesting pictures, now wouldn't they?

So, for what reason could I like this? Well it is the in between matter, the ordinary but real stuff between big things happening, the quiet when one is not paying attention and the world moves on. This is like a single frame taken out almost randomly from a film shoot at 24 frames per second. It's so unheroic, but yet it is substantial because this is the space of 99.99% of our lives. No drama, no disaster, just things starting and finishing and moments of reflection over tea.

In such circumstances, I do want to see more. What happens before and afterwards?

Now to the picture itself:

1. Is it interesting? Yes, but only from the unheroic perspective I've tried to explain above. We could easily pass this picture by. A painter would have gotten the faces in more fully, but this is a photograph, one hopefully of a series we might ultimately see.
   
   
2. Does it arouse the passions? No, not at all! This is a safe quiet place in the world.
   
   
3. What's the meaning? None! It just is a report, like Brueghel the Elder might have painted, but formed more carefully (one can do that with paints, it's not called cheating there!). Is it lazy not to keep taking pictures until all the people are posed perfectly? Maybe. But this is what it is. "Does it work?", we must ask, not is it as complete as a painting might be.
   
   
4. Where's the beauty? There's no esthetic beauty, nothing sensual at all. However there is a pastoral beauty, like a scene of sheep grazing, a man fishing. Shown are peaceful gaps in between the hustle and bustle of life's pressures. Life is just enjoyed as life without ceremony, pretense or masks to be what one is not. This is the strength of the picture. When we can live like this, our humanity hopefully recharged and we can reflect on what we have done, what we might do and what we shouldn't so. Or else we are free just to breathe in the air and enjoy the tea and the sound of the people talking to each other about whatever is on their mind.
   
   
5. How about composition? At first this is a clumsy picture with no main character of interest. Then we realize that the woman near us, and therefore seemingly large, seems to dominate but for what purpose? We almost give up. Why should we even bother? The diagonals of the table and chairs move us to the right. Her arm and leg moves us back to the table and we are getting nowhere fast! Worse, divided as the picture is by the clumsy tree, we are stuck! This cannot be the right way to enter the scene, so we leave. The picture seemed interesting, so we re-enter, this time from the left and now we see that the man seated and facing us has real energy. This fellow seems much more important, but why? We can now notice that his head is placed at the junction of the upper 1/3 and lateral 1/3. This position is always favored by the eye and mind. So we now search where he is looking. Well it seems he's actually thinking to himself, not looking anywhere! He's on his own! Despite being on the same table, his companion, seated opposite, is elsewhere, looking to the street, at least in that moment. So now we can ask and speculate as to what might have been there...
   
   As you see, we can engage the subjects and ask as if we are actually there looking from the left of that lady and wondering, "What all these people about?" The patterns of diagonals make the picture dynamic but the tree divides the frame into two competing parts that then balance each other well. So the composition, although unfamiliar to us, works to place us there in the same scene as an observer. So, we now are also there in Istanbul, sipping tea and resting from important things! That's why I selected this apparently ordinary vacation picture and described it as I have. A picture that takes one to an exotic place and gives one an opportunity for reflection like this, is more than a picture, it's become art.
   

Thanks Fahim for allowing me to revisit!

Asher