The Wholeness Of The Self

“Remembering our past, carrying it around with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self.
To ensure that the self doesn’t shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends.
They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it.”
(From “Identity” by Milan Kundera)

This man was standing at the gate of the mausoleum of the third Mughal emperor, Akbar the Great, located in Sikandra in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
He was not young but he was not old either and his face carried emotional wounds with a moving melancholy…

Join the photographer at www.facebook.com/laurent.goldstein.photography

© All photographs are copyrighted and all rights reserved.
Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).
The use of any work without consent of the artist is PROHIBITED and will lead automatically to consequences.

Advertisement

That Overwhelming Existence

© All photographs are copyrighted and all rights reserved.
Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).
The use of any work without consent of the artist is PROHIBITED and will lead automatically to consequences.

“Who if I cried out, would hear me among the angel’s hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are still just able to endure.
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.”
(From “Duino Elegies” by Rainer Maria Rilke – Austro-German lyric poet, 1875-1926)

This was shot from the main room leading to the Tomb of the Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great (1555–1605) which is in Sikandra, a suburb of Agra, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Whenever my brother Manish and I drive from Delhi to Benaras we often stop there or at the Taj Mahal for a break.
The fun is to try to take pictures of those places with a new angle.
That day the heat was almost unbearable, I went inside the mausoleum hoping to find some freshness, Manish sat at the door surounded by jali screens and I took this picture…

Join the photographer at www.facebook.com/laurent.goldstein.photography