The pousada - How do you capture silence?
The silence was loud. Louder than in any church.
The pillows were being washed.
The mattresses were new.
Paint was falling off the walls. I had always been drawn to decay. It was like nature’s natural abstract art. But to live in it?
People coming and going. Some stayed several nights. Some, only one. Nights of apprehension and curiosity about who was arriving next.
The Ukrainian refugees. The first ones I shared a breath and a heart with. At first, I had so wanted to photograph them. But a mix of shyness and the feeling that it was out of place in what was our home for the night kept me from asking. After a while, I didn’t want to anymore.
A man insisting on sharing his tiny lasagna, hardly enough to feed a grown man.
The loud women with massive makeup and tiny skirts getting ready to leave at 3 am. "To where?" I wondered. They had left two tiny packages of biscuits on my suitcase in the morning.
The two men in the kitchen. One of them seemed to be coming down from something. Fear wanted to grab me for a moment as I realized I was alone in the dark with them, but then I remembered to care—to listen to the silence.
The student who was searching for a new place to live.
The bike tourists.
The elderly woman who was in Lisbon to visit the grave of her deceased father. Sleeping in the dorm room only the two of us for one night. Waking up to the sound of something crawling inside a bag. Fearing it was a rat but praying it wasn’t, I was lying still, also not wanting to scare my neighbor. Eventually, I drifted back to sleep. The next morning, I asked her what she thought it had been. She suspected a cockroach, but hadn’t wanted to scare me. We found it, and she skillfully escorted it out, placing a blanket under the door to keep it from coming back.
So many people. Sharing the breath. Sharing the heart. Common humanity.
The silence was loud. The view to die for. The decay massive. But it was clean. So many people, so many destinies.
The journey from wanting to photograph them all and pondering if the stories I want to tell are best served with words. With room for interpretation and imagination. With space. With stillness. But photography can of course also do this. I just have so much to learn first.
How do you capture silence?