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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty Five: Stimulating the imagination with “opposites and contradictions” > Canalside, Bruges, Belgium, 2005
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12-JUN-2005

Canalside, Bruges, Belgium, 2005

Here, in the midst of a busy city, a man sits on a bench and reads his newspaper, which he has piled at his sides. I take a camera position that conceals the man – he could be reading, dozing, or perhaps just sitting back and enjoying the view. The opposing elements here are the sheer scale of all that space and the fact that only one person seems to be using it at this moment. There is also all that water, and yet nothing on it. All that history stands before him in those lovely old buildings, yet this fellow may not even be conscious of it. Once again, I leave it up to my viewers to build their own conclusions from these opposites and contradictions.

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Phil Douglis14-Sep-2008 22:08
Thanks, Kathy, for seeing this image as prelude to a performance. It tells me that this image truly works as expression for you. The image says much more to you than it shows. It triggers your imagination, causing you to go beyond what is here, and create a new series of images within your own mind.
Kathy Khuner14-Sep-2008 00:06
Hi Phil. I was looking at some of your galleries and found this image, which gave me a start. What I saw was a man who comes to an outdoor theater. He sits down on the bench and begins to read his newspaper while waiting for the play to begin. All he can see at the moment is the scrim at the front of the stage with this early morning scene painted on it. In a few minutes the scrim will rise and the stage will be teeming with the people who live behind the painted walls and windows. The man will watch people living their lives in that moment - people waking up, yawning, laughing, crying, screaming, making love, eating breakfast, getting ready for the day. After a while the scrim will descend, a thin painted veil that stands between him and life. He will stand up and walk away alone.

I just came back from a 2 week vacation in Provence and Paris. I will put my pics on my pbase site in a week or so and would appreciate comments from you. All I can say is, Provence is no India. Kathy
Phil Douglis19-Jan-2008 04:27
Well put, Vera. The lone man is an incongruity. And incongruity is always at the basis of "opposites and contradictions."
Guest 06-Jan-2008 01:54
I always think of European streets as being filled with people, yet here is this man sitting in solitude enjoying a magnificent view. Because he is in the center of the page it is as if he is the conductor of an orchestra just getting ready to wave his arms so the music will begin.
Vera
Phil Douglis13-Jul-2005 22:16
I enjoy your second looks at my images, Marisa, as much as your initial visits. You always manage to illuminate a new aspect of it for me. You ask yourself if this image is real or imagined? One might also ask if photography itself is real or imagined. I have long felt that as photographers we are not expressing truth as much as are expressing illusions that illuminate the truth. Picasso said it best, when he said "art is a lie that make us realize the truth."
Guest 13-Jul-2005 15:50
The more I look at this image the more it become a stage set, but now I feel that all the picture is a stage...
Is this picture about something real, a real place in a real world or is it just a very well done mirage? What are we looking at?
A chill runs through my back... I feel like in Matrix...
Phil Douglis06-Jul-2005 23:39
You are right -- this does look like a stage set for a perfect city. Not a soul in sight except for this fellow on the bench. He might as well be sitting before a painting, as you say. You also see it as a mirror, where we look at a man who looks at a place that can't look back. In a way, this image asks us to consider the nature of reality? What we see, or what we want to see? If my image can ask such questions of its viewers, it is doing what I want it to do. Thanks, Marisa, for these wonderful observations.
Guest 06-Jul-2005 22:28
You know Phil, my first impression when I saw this picture was that this looks like those scale models of cities where everything seems to be 'perfect', nothing is ruined, there's no garbage in the floor, all the trees looks like the same, all the windows are cleaned...
and, amazingly, I had this sensation: the man is looking at a painting... a painting of the city, where nobody lives, and empty and abbandoned city.. Strange, isn't it? And we are looking at him, looking at...
I love this kind of 'mirror effect' (well, at least in my mind it works like that!!).
Very strange picture...
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