Red Tent and Masonry

I picked this older image to start this blog. For a long time now I wanted to populate a place that is my very own, that has consistent rules and a design that I actually chose instead of being forced into square boxes between ads. A place that feels less crowded and more focused. A place about art and photography, about clean lines and enough whitespace to breath. This is why I’m about to start here.

1/800, f/9, ISO 200, 32 mm, Lumix DMC-GX8

This first image is one I’m coming back to here and there. I liked it a lot from the moment it was taken. That was in May 2018, I spent some days in bruges with a group of people back then. After a few days of wandering through the city and looking at all the masonry explicitely redecorated I felt alienated and sick. I took the afternoon off and went to some of the old canals of the flemish city. Luckily these have been outfitted with a number of temporary pavilions floating on the water as part of the Triennale Brugge 2018. One of these pavilions is designed by the spanish architecture duo Selgascano founded by José Selgas and Lucia Cano. Funnily their website only consists of a google image search of their buildings.

I was intrigued by the way this conspicious red tent was making its way into the fabric of this city and right into my heart. I love the lightness, the ease and on the other hand the power of this remarkable temporary building.

In and out and around, this shape needs to be examined from a lot of different viewpoints. I was lucky to be there in the late afternoon, the sun was already low, the light was warm, casting long shadows. Ideal conditions for a photo walk. Needless to say that I had to take many photos until I felt the security of having captured this object in its entirety.

If you’re looking closer you can the see that the window frames of the houses in the background use the same red color as the pavilion. Also the warm brick color itself is blending nicely with the one from the new neighbour. On some of my images the red tent looks like an alien, very foreign and a bit rude. But from the very beginning I’ve seen it as a new interpretation of what was there before, as a welcome addition that strengthens both itself but also its surroundings. I guess this was the driving idea behind this particular image, to melt both of these worlds together and present them as a greater whole.

I loved the experience of walking inside the tent and looking up towards the sky and the roofs of the neighborhood. All is transparent, just tiny steel rods are crossing your view, reframing your viewpoint. Depending on the angle you look through the plastic film, the colors start shifting from a deeper red to light purple. The pontoon it is sitting on, is made of a bright yellow adding up to the always changing color composition. The sun starts to shimmer, glaring reflections are flattering the curved surfaces. It’s warm inside, almost hot. A fresh breeze of air is flocking in whenever you come close to entrance or exit.

For me this pavilion saved my day. I felt so happy and confident again after those long hours being caged between old masonry. Suddenly my personal flux of time felt consistent again. Back to the future.