The Volume of Shadow

No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t understand what exactly made this photograph catch my eye. Each time I paused, I couldn’t move past it. Is it because it’s taken in Baku, Azerbaijan? Because the place feels familiar? Because it represents time through such a shadow? Because it resonates with new topographics? None of these seem to be enough for me to be so absorbed in viewing — among the hundreds of pictures in this book, which is a dialogue between a contemporary photographer and a photographer from over a hundred years ago^*. But still, I find myself entranced. What exactly am I looking at, though? I don’t know. There are many pictures in this Dialogue that I long and look for long periods, but with them, it’s as if I know where to anchor myself. Here, I try to “read” the image. In this grayscale photograph, the place where the car should be is an empty cube — it has given way to the shadow. The shadow appears framed. It's as if that ceiling has become the ceiling of the shadow.

The photograph doesn’t let me in. It doesn’t allow me to truly see it. The photographer knew exactly where to stand so that I wouldn’t be able to penetrate those shadowy walls from any angle. The shadow is a trapezoidal surface that slides across the picture and creates an empty volume, pulling me inward. I constantly try to tilt my head left or right, hoping to find a way in, but that narrow striped column in the center holds me in place, keeps me right in the middle, pushing me back toward the surface of the photograph. Each time I look at this image, I wrestle with myself, but I can’t find a way into the photograph. Looking is all I can do.

^*.In the book Dialogue, Khosrow Peyghami re-photographs the Silk Road route that Paul Nadar had photographed before.