A Box of Photographs - Tigabelas

Photograph #88

This is a photograph of the girl, from behind, in a blue-tiled bathroom. She is wearing a white sarong, tied at the waist, but nothing else. Her blonde hair falls down her back, which is sunburnt. Rather badly. Above her waist, you can see a white band, left by her bikini top.

Photograph #89

A photograph of the boy, stretched out in a hammock, a cigarette in hand. The hammock is tied between two wooden poles of a hut on the beach. Beyond him, wooden boats painted white and orange, blue and pink, and a sea the colour of the sky, late on a winter's afternoon.

Photograph #90

Another hammock, this time inhabited by the girl, curled up like a cat with a book whose cover you cannot make out. The strings of the hammock are cutting into the flesh on her shoulders. You get the impression that the both of them have been there, in their hammocks, for a long time, and that they have no intention of moving. In the photo, at least, they would be there forever. Forever in those hammocks, by the beach, in that island paradise. Yet, you think, a little forlornly, those photographs are the closest to forever they could possibly get. In every other way, they're gone.


Photographs #91-106

A series of photographs taken in quick succession, all of which show the same dirt lane, lined on either side with shrubs and palms and banana trees. The first shows the boy on a bicycle, at the top of the lane. In each photo he gets closer and closer, eventually passing by and continuing off round the corner, out of the frame. You hold the photographs at the edge and flick through them like a flip-book, watching him cycle jerkily, like a stop-motion film.

Photographs #107-123

This time, the girl cycles down the lane, coming from the other direction. When you flip through them quickly you can see her hair blowing in the breeze. As she passes the camera she holds up two fingers in a V shape and sticks out her tongue.

Photograph #124

This is a photograph of a sunset. Its beauty is otherworldly, impossible. The sun has gone down behind a faraway mountain, miles across the sea. The sky is spangled by streaks of cloud in gold and peach and red and pink, colours which fall into the sea which jumbles them up with blues and greys. It looks like a painting, a post-impressionist oeuvre by Signac or even Claude Monet. The light cast around is warm and pinkish, unlike any natural light you've ever seen. In the sea, two silhouettes stand, black against the glorious light.