Street scenes in black and white

We meet Nemet here. The story begins earlier.

 Street scenes in black and white 

Nemet’s show doesn’t open until ten, I’m not sure why. We leave the hotel about a quarter till, stopping under the street lamps at every corner to make sure we are following the tiny, tightly-drawn map he gave us. Roz reads it and points. She’s good at maps. We find we left in plenty of time and walk several times around the block until we can see through the store-front window that the space is filling up.

“Palare Rose”
Click on the picture to see the dash of color.

The photographs are grainy, black and white, some slightly over- and some slightly underexposed. In each, there’s a random dash of unadulterated color, one element of the scene - one minor element, off in a corner or on the margin - painted in with what looks like acrylic. In one, the color is not a color: Zayna is sitting at a sidewalk-café table; the cigarette in the ashtray in front of her is a glaring white. In another, a young man’s shoes - a young man in t-shirt and jeans: his shoes are shiny black as if patent leather.

Nemet comes to greet us. He tells us how “glad I am you come.” But he won’t ask us what we think, he says; that wouldn’t be fair. Still, he is glad we “not know lots of [the] places,” so to us the pictures are just pictures. But almost all have people in them. And all pictures with people in them become stories, because, as a species, we like connections so much; we make connections whether there are or there aren’t. Almost any picture of a place, whether you know the place or not, also becomes a story.

     He invites us to have a glass of wine. There are also on the table with the wine and the glasses, cigarettes and matches. The air is smoky, making the pictures look darker than they are. The wine is dark and strong; one glass depresses me beyond usual. The pictures look darker still. The spots of color seem to fade.

08.09.18