Encountered Artists

Elizabeth Kiem does it again.

Out on the street I was thinking of the Bayanov family photographs—pictures that are, by definition, afterthoughts. I imagined snapshots of holiday tables, weekend picnics, vacations on the Black Sea in which a dozen bathers sprawl or strike poses and Alla appears in regal profile behind her father’s sunburnt shoulders while her mother emerges from the surf in the far right corner, a tight black suit, her hands arrested at the moment before she peels a bathing cap from her head. They are somewhere, under smudged glass on a mantelpiece, lying facedown in a shoebox, sliding unmoored across the faded black paper of a century-old album.
- from Alla Bayanova on the Arbat

Surely this will prompt a slew of attempts to write about my own encountered artists, living on streets where the names change, with newspapers pasted on the insides of window panes, drinking straight from the bottle at the kitchen table with a shy teenage daughter on one knee. Inspiration, or imitation? Sometimes I can't even tell anymore.

(That's two archived Morning News links in a row; I'm obviously trying to catch up with some reading.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.