Inspiration

Below is a palladium print made from large format film created by Tillman Crane. It was taken at St Columba’s Chapel, Isle of Iona. In the foreground of the frame is an old window ledge with several small stones of different sizes and shapes. In the center background there is the lower part of a window, and old white washed walls on either side.

Crane has captured the mystery of the scene in a simple style. He has made sure the main subjects are correctly exposed and left the window highlighted. There is no need to see what is outside as the story is about the stones and why they are placed on the window sill.

Before reading about the location of the scene, I felt that it was indeed somewhere old and used from the rough stone work and small window frame. The image fills me with sadness for some unknown reason; perhaps because of the feeling of remoteness that I get from the image and the unknown story behind each stone. Were they all placed there by one person or several different people? What were they thinking, feeling when they placed the stones?

I feel drawn to this place to witness this simple but mysterious scene and of course to photograph it in such a way as to capture the same feeling as I get when viewing Crane’s photograph.