She turns away briefly and smiles. A smile that perhaps turns into a laugh because someone has said something that for a moment brings back the lightness that we often took for granted in the past when we sat together with friends. In bars, in shared rooms, in someone’s kitchen.
The space around her is red, so it is full of energy and also warmth. Only she can be seen in the picture, but she is not alone. The simple sweater, the subtle make-up. Here she doesn’t have to pretend or prove that she belongs. The effort that human interaction can mean dissolves in the naturalness of being together among friends. Come as you are. Be who you are. The bass line sounds in my head Nirvana-Song.
What could your image description have to do with you personally?
The picture reminds me of one I cut out of a newspaper to stick in a street-facing window in my first apartment. I had to look at it every time I looked outside. Today it hangs on my desk. It shows a portrait of the writer Ingeborg Bachmann sitting and laughing at a party.
It always reminds me that the loneliness I feel in moments of despair can be overcome by meeting others. In being together, in the fact that someone opens their apartment to you, someone else cooks you soup, that you can laugh together and in these moments time loses its meaning. The time that passes and perhaps is just wasted, the time in which we live and the past time that often lingers painfully within us. I think I should invite a few friends over again and cook for them.
Pictures tell stories and every story says something about the person who tells it. Based on an old projective test, the TAT, we show a prominent personality a picture and ask them to interpret the scene. More articles from the category “One picture, two questions“ can be found here.
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