« All of a sudden something appears. For example, a door opens, a butterfly passes beating its wings. Simply this nothing», writes Georges Didi-Huberman on the beautiful yet always fragile logic of apparition in his Phalènes: Essais Sur L’Apparition, 2, (Paris: Les Éditions de Minui, 2013). With their restless anamorphisms, shadows, the wonderful, fragile, shape-changers that they are, make wonderful apparitions. But what I perhaps like best about them is that they don’t suddenly appear: they creep up on you first, and then BAM! You have your shadow. And then…nothing; they vanish back to where they came from.
This one is actually a homage to Victor Hugo (see his L’Ombre du mancenillier).
I find shadows of trees particularly lovely, so perhaps this post ought also to be a homage to the trees of Paris:
sketches and fragments. davidt. 