"We do not remember days, we remember moments."
— Cesare Pavese
The Council of Shadows, Paris, France, 2010
Merit Award, Black and White Magazine, Special Issue n.84, August 2011
They gathered, as they always did, just before the world remembered them.
Four figures, half-swallowed by the hush of chestnut trees, appeared where the morning light refused to intrude. No one knew their names. No one asked. They came as they were, draped in coats of midnight and memory, faces blurred by time’s tender erosion. From a distance, they might have been old friends. From another, conspirators. Only the trees knew the truth, and the trees never told.
The benches bore witness. The gravel path curved slightly to avoid their presence, as if time itself bent around this meeting. The woman always sat first. She carried nothing but the ache of some distant promise. The others remained standing—sentinels, not of war or peace, but of things unspoken. Beneath the boughs, words were unnecessary. Their silence was eloquent.
There’s no record of what passed between them. Only this image remains—blurred, like a fogged recollection, or the beginning of a dream that wakes you with its absence. Some say the photo is haunted. Others say it’s a lie. But those who look closely—really look—feel something ancient stir. Not fear, but familiarity.
What matters here is not the people. It is the space between them. The hush of history. The sacredness of stillness. The weight of waiting.
And just like that, they vanished again. Back into the dusk of forgetfulness. Until next time.
Artist Statement
This photograph—rendered in muted monochrome and softened through the gauze of memory—evokes my ongoing exploration of presence and absence, of figures that exist more in the emotional than physical realm. In my work, I strive not to tell stories directly, but to leave fragments, textures, and spaces for the viewer to inhabit. This image was taken in the Tuileries Garden, but the exact location is incidental. What matters is the hush it invites—the ambiguity, the suggestion of history repeating itself behind layers of shadow.
The blurring is intentional. I used a plastic Diana lens. It reflects how I experience memory: imprecise, emotive, sacred. The figures are unknowable, and yet, perhaps, deeply familiar. My hope is that viewers enter the image not with curiosity, but with a sense of quiet recognition.