The scene has a time-worn,
peaceful quality and it is also lively: people sleep or lean back
on benches with energetic diagonals, and a man in their midst plays a
bright horn with thoughtful intensity. Behind him a tree rises
gracefully and intersects with a sagging curve of animated laundry hung
out to dry, as well as another energetic diagonal in a fire escape.
“The opposites that as living beings we are most interested in, perhaps, are tranquility and excitement, or repose and stir” wrote Eli Siegel and, he continued:
The composition of this photograph binds these opposites together so that we don’t jump discordantly from one to the other. Instead there is a pleasing continuity between repose and stir, liveliness and decrepitude, and our hope to see the world as making sense is met.
*from “Comment on the Relation of Life to the Fifteen Opposites”
“The opposites that as living beings we are most interested in, perhaps, are tranquility and excitement, or repose and stir” wrote Eli Siegel and, he continued:
Tranquility or repose by itself
is boredom, uselessness. Excitement or stir by itself is uncertainty,
sloppiness, fidgetiness, indecisiveness, the plague of unwilling
motion. Tranquility and excitement are one in all art. When they exist
together in a person, that person is happy.*
The composition of this photograph binds these opposites together so that we don’t jump discordantly from one to the other. Instead there is a pleasing continuity between repose and stir, liveliness and decrepitude, and our hope to see the world as making sense is met.
*from “Comment on the Relation of Life to the Fifteen Opposites”