Why does this image make me uneasy? Do we see too much, so much that it unsettles us? Or too little, leaving our minds to fill the void? I see, for example, that pranzo, the Italian lunch, has ended; perhaps spaghetti alla pomodoro and melanzane alla parmigiana were on the menu. For dessert, an espresso with grappa. What we see in the photograph is shaped and completed by our own memories and experiences. We never see only what is actually there. But what, then, causes this discomfort?
First, the facts. According to the title, the photograph was taken in Marina di Massa,
a tourist town in Italy, a typical Tuscan seaside resort with white beaches along the Tyrrhenian Sea. Close to Lucca and Pisa, it is likely teeming with people in high season.
Judging by the number of tables, this seems to be the terrace of a restaurant. Eight tables, not identical, but covered with the same white tablecloths. Yet they are completely bare, no plates, no glasses, no cutlery. No remnants of a chaotic meal. Nothing. A gap in the wall offers a glimpse beyond, a large tree stands there, perhaps a grapevine, its branches stretching towards the edges of the terrace, supported by a framework of white-painted steel. Judging by the shadows, the photograph was taken in late afternoon. The absence of leaves suggests either early spring or late autumn.
It is frustrating not to see what lies beyond the wall. The gap in the middle of the image offers only a sliver, perhaps the true stage of the scene. Do tourists and locals gather there daily for lunch? Are we standing backstage, in the waiting area? Are the tables, neatly covered, ready to be moved should the restaurant become too crowded? Does seeing the backside of this setting make the image uncomfortable? Is it like peeking into a filthy kitchen after finishing a meal at a restaurant, shattering the illusion of a romantic, shared experience? Do we see too much, in an unsettling way? The harsh afternoon shadows add another layer; tables, walls, and floor are stripped of function. The tablecloths become blank canvases, where shadows paint an abstract composition. The stark, perpendicular shadows remind me of Mondrian’s later work. The photographer has composed the arrangement of tabletops with careful precision and harmony. At first, I saw this image as an abstract painting, perhaps something by Bart van der Leck or Malevich, where two-dimensional planes, the tabletops, appear to float in space. This is what unsettles me: I expect to see an idyllic vacation scene from Italy, but instead, the photographer forces me to see the beauty of pure abstraction. And yet, that is not the true discomfort.
There are no chairs. Eight tables without chairs, a sight that fills me with melancholy. The tables are not used for gathering, for dining, but neither are they repurposed, even as storage surfaces. A table is meant to connect people. Without chairs, that connection is severed. Yet there is one chair. Just one. Not by a table, but between them. How lonely it looks. Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi argues that a building only becomes architecture when an event takes place within it, when the order imposed by the architect is disrupted. But here, no such event occurs. The backstage nature of this setting, the photograph’s abstraction, suggests an overwhelming sense of order. The absence of chairs implies an absence of people, an absence of life.
The structured placement of the tables echoes the kind of order Milan Kundera describes in Farewell Waltz: ‘The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.’
A meticulously arranged space without people is lifeless. The eight tables suggest their intended use: they are meant for dining in a restaurant. Chairs exist for us, extensions of our bodies. An absent chair is an absent person.
Tschumi describes human presence in space as an act of violence; our bodies both experience space and occupy it, disturbing the order imagined by the architect. The moment a person enters a space, when an event unfolds, that imagined order is broken.
I know that photography freezes time, suspending a moment. But in this image, stripped of people, chairs, and any trace of human presence, time is twice frozen. The photographer has sought an extreme form of order. The image does not capture reality, but, to borrow Kundera’s words, it captures a longing for death. The discomfort in this photograph lies in seeing what is not there. Because what we do not see is life itself.
photographer: Martin Thomas, Untitled, Marina di Massa, 2000
Adriaan Monshouwer, Face to Face – Contemporary Dutch Photography, April 2002, Uitgeverij De Verbeelding