The Space Between Us
To my big surprise I was awarded the Metro photo challenge Peoples Award for this picture . This was a decade ago and it has been sold for conference rooms and private homes. I only told the one buyer about the depth and the meta meaning behind the picture. Most have reacted to the warm colours that fit with their office interior design and wanted a different picture of the amazing neo futurist building Turning Torso by architect Santiago Calatrava which stretches almost 200 meters towards the sky .
However the picture is about opposites and their interaction, what is happening in between :
The Turning torso which is looking to the right, is representing the masculine, with its phallic posture, looking towards Oresund facing Denmark, my country of birth and past.
The woman in the dress to the left is looking to the left, clearly she is representing the feminine. Her dress is the same as the "man" with squares, looking inland towards the inland of Sweden, my country of current residence and future.
Thus I have established a relationship between the two, which I found very interesting. However it is not just the relationship between man and woman which is in "The space between us", it is also dialog between the past and the future. The woman's dress is and old 50's dress when farming and the iron industry was at it highest here in Sweden and the "skyscraper" is the representing the future .
Hence it is a relationship between.
- The past & the future
- Woman & man
- Agriculture & technology
- Left & Right politics
- Feminism & Masculinisme
- Soft & Hard
- Emotion & Material
- Small & big
An important detail is the woman standing with the her hand close to her face, making the observant viewer speculate about her pose: Is she thinking about turning back or walking away, is she covering her mouth in shock or maybe just out of curiosity or is she just speculating why this pretentious photographer is shouting all the time and laughing about him, wanting her to pretend there's a tall man standing behind her without knowing it the Turning Torso in the far background ?