I like photography because it is open to silence. A waiting place, unnamed and inviting. In the last meetings I don’t hear much, like it’s never really my turn to talk. I miss the warmth of a colder and simpler stare. When we both know, (we all know). When we don’t repeat. Why use mouths to make so much noise? I wish I could leave but can’t think of another place. So, I’m waiting.

Untitled photograph by Christos Stavrou © 2007 All rights reserved

 

“There is nowhere but here. There are not two places, there are not two prisons. It’s my parlour, where I wait for nothing. I don’t know where it is, I don’t know what it’s like. that’s no business of mine. I don’t know if it’s big, or if it’s small, or if it’s closed, if it’s open… Open on what? There is nothing else, only it. Open on the void , open on the nothing… Open on the silence, looking out on the silence, straight out - why not?”

 

Untitled photograph by Christos Stavrou © 2007 All rights reserved

 

“All this time on the brink of silence, I knew it! On a rock, lashed to a rock, in the midst of silence. Its great swell rears towards me, I’m streaming with it. (It’s an image: those are words.) It’s a body, It’s not I - I knew it wouldn’t be. I’m not outside, I’m inside, I’m in something. I’m shut up: the silense is outside. Nothing but this voice and the silence all round. No need of walls? Yes we must have walls: I need walls, good and thick. I need a prison (I was right), for me alone. I’ll go there now, I’ll put me in it.”

From Samuel Beckett’s novel The Unnamable (1953)

Photograph by Camilla Hill, Portobello, London © 2007 All rights reserved