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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty Three: Stirring emotions through atmosphere and mood. > Restless spirit, Achillion Palace, Corfu, Greece, 2005
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16-SEP-2005

Restless spirit, Achillion Palace, Corfu, Greece, 2005

Elizabeth, Empress of Austria in the late 19th century, lived on the edge of madness. Known by the nickname of Sisi, she took refuge in isolation and illness and eventually fled the royal court in Vienna to live in seclusion, mostly in the Achillion Palace she built on the Greek island of Corfu. In 1898, an anarchist stabbed her to death. In this photograph, I attempt to depict the restless spirit of Sisi by photographing a statue of her that stands by the palace entrance. I change the image from real to unreal, and completely alter the mood of the photograph by converting it from color to black and white. The menacing shadows on the wall intensify accordingly. With her back to us, a ghostly pale Sisi quietly slips out of the frame.

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Phil Douglis27-Nov-2005 23:17

Thanks, Michael for this splendid comment. It illuminates the relationship of subject to context as well as I've ever seen it described. Needless to say, I agree with all you say here, and am always thinking of this relationship whenever I make or look at photographs. There is for example, nothing at all "wrong" with a literal snapshot made without regard to composition, exposure or focus, if the person looking at the photographs knows the people who are pictured and cares about them. In these galleries, we teach expressive travel photography, which also depends on context for meaning, yet requires some degree of technical and artistic knowledge. We can't make the mistake of holding all images up to the same standards -- everything depends on the purpose of the photo, the context provided along with the photo, and the context the viewer brings to the photo. Thanks again for helping me make these important distinctions, Michael.
Guest 27-Nov-2005 08:35
Hello, I’m the guest who commented on your picture – and being Austrian I do of course know about Sisi, so for me the picture gets its meaning because of its context; in fact, I had even missed your own comment on menace, I must have skimmed it over.
To me, context and meaning are inseperable. Take a picture of a smiling muslim next to a truck. Now add a caption. It might say he was underway to drive his dynamite-filled truck into a police station, killing dozens. It might say that he was shot at a checkpoint, leaving wife and children, because he couldn’t stop for a failure of his breaks. Instant reversal of meaning.
Take a picture of a beautiful landscape. Add a caption praising its untouched beauty and how little-known the area is. Or add a caption saying that this area lies now submerged beneath a powerplant’s lake.
The same even holds true for holiday snaps. Their meaning changes by the very fact that they are a testimonial of somebody having visited the photographed spot. For the same reason, even technically poor snaps of family events are not bad photography at all – they carry a lot of meaning.
Phil Douglis27-Nov-2005 07:32
Without the jagged shadows, the mood and atmosphere of this image would be very different. You mention menace several times here. I suggested menace in my own comments as well. Do we both see and feel the menace in those shadows on the wall because of our knowledge of how Sisi met her end? Stabbed to death at age 60 by a 24 year old anarchist on the promenade of Switzerland's Lake Geneva, her last words were "What happened to me?" Knowing this, is it any wonder that we look at this image and see menace in those shadows? How important then, is context to meaning?
Guest 26-Nov-2005 22:32
The jagged shadows to the left really make this picture for me. They are lighter than the dark area Sisi stands in; it seems to me as if the darkness had spilled out from her, or as if the darkness had engulfed her and was now advancing. I feel that the menace of this shadow is even heightened by it falling from right to left, opposing the usual direction of viewing. The spiky leaves along the bottom further add to the air of menace. A fine expression of the empress’ clouded and unhappy state of mind, almost claustrophobic.
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