In essence what this series will intend to do is incorporate many of the devices found in poetry into photography- metaphor, allusion, symbolism, etc. I've been studying a bit of Spanish poetry this past year (Just graduated with my B.A. in Spanish woooo!) and was fascinated to find out how much meaning could be packed into a small poem. Even the seemingly obvious ones had a few secrets.
Since this is the first one I'm uploading I thought it might be a good idea to give a bit of a breakdown of how and why it came to be what it is so that you could see more or less how this series works.
For this image I wanted to create something based around the central concept of silence. When I was thinking of the proper character for this theme my first thought was to the myth of Philomela. You can read up on the whole myth here, but basically she was raped and had her tongue cut out so she couldn't tell anyone and was eventually turned into a swallow (that is, in the earliest versions of the myth. More commonly in later versions it's a nightingale, but I think the swallow makes more sense since it never actually sings, just twitters). In order to identify her I wanted to make her embody a swallow. I like the idea of having her dressed in a realistic way that was able to incorporate the characteristics of the bird, so I decided to make a dress (not bad for my first try, eh?). There are of course a variety of types of swallows, but I ended up choosing to use the barn swallow because of its red throat which would allow me to incorporate the blood coming from her mouth.
The blood aspect was done for a few reasons. First off, obviously, to reference the tongue being cut out. Secondly, I wanted to incorporate some relation to Shakespeare's Lavinia from "Titus Andronicus" as much of her character was drawn from the myth of Philomela. This is probably one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, primarily due to a movie version of it directed by Julie Taymor, which is amazing. There is a very powerful scene in the movie (here's a clip, the scene starts around 2:10, caution- very very emotional) in which, after having been raped, had her tongue cut out aaand her hands cut off, Lavinia opens her mouth and blood pours out. The setting of the photo amid all the dead branches was also partly inspired by the sticks she wears instead of hands. Also this photo is specifically a part of a series of poems that I shot incorporating blood, where the blood is a symbol for all the potential stories that circulate through everyone. In this case, as her tongue is cut out, her stories and ability to tell them leave her.
The flowers in the photo are dried white roses. In the Victorian language of flowers white roses were meant to represent silence, purity, and other similar things. I used dried flowers to show that while the white, silent color remained but the life and purity had been removed. I positioned the flowers where they are because I wanted to suggest the idea that the flowers were growing out of/because of her. Their shriveled silence, is a product of her tortured silence, a product of her assault.
The title is also intended to further the silence in the piece. Although the name Philomela means "lover of fruit" it is often mistranslated to "Lover of song" (Philo is the root for "lover"). Even though it's wrong I think the "Lover of song" translation is more fitting with the myth. It was in keeping with this false translation that I removed the end of her name in the title, thus, in addition to simply referencing the central character of the pieces, I also superimpose the central concept by silencing her song.
I want to end this post with a quote from my poetry professor that has really stuck with me and I believe really speaks to the importance of good art, and that it can have a value beyond just being something interesting to look at. I went something like this:
"When confronted with poetry, people tend to back away and think that they can't possibly understand it because they don't know everything about all the references- about this myth, or the history of this event, or the symbology in that culture, or the author's biography - that they have to know all this before they go into a poem. But the fact is, it's the complete opposite. Poetry should be a starting point from which you branch out and investigate and learn about everything it contains."
p.s. Since we're on the subject of swallows here's a photo of a tree swallow I took about 4 years ago.
