This week’s Lens Artists Challenge comes to us from Egidio, who sets the challenge theme: Longing. Egidio suggests a Portuguese word as a kind of synonym for “longing”: saudade. Egidio quotes Wikipedia for a definition: an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent someone or something. It is a recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events, often elusive, that cause a sense of separation from the exciting, pleasant, or joyous sensations they once caused. I find this an apt concept for reflecting on some images.
The feature image above – and to the left – is the same cemetery as in another image posted recently. I captured these two images while on a drive through backcountry Maine with my sister-in-law and a friend shortly after my brother passed away. It was almost twenty years ago, but the feelings of longing persist. My brother had chosen a spot on the edge of a forest for his ashes, and ever since I have associated trees with his passing.
(And, yes, that is the true color of fall foliage in New England.)
Winter is a time of longing for many – longing for the year past, and a hopeful longing for the spring to come. This image of a lake and the woods in winter was shot in backcountry Connecticut, near the Connecticut/New York line. (The lake is Mead Lake, which feeds the East Branch of the Byram River in western Connecticut.)
For some reason, this solitary water lily conjures up for me feelings of loneliness and longing.
A public concourse, usually filled with people and activities, evokes feelings of longing when there is no one there. This is the Plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico, usually populated with artists and craftspeople and crowds browsing their wares.
Finally, this old orchard, once filled with families picking bushels of apples, but now beginning to turn wild, signifies for me a longing for times and pleasures past and almost forgotten. (And a sense of mystery as well: Where does that path go?)
And that’s it for me this week. Thanks to Egidio for a thoughtful theme that led to many nice feelings and memories for me.
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