I believe a similar process occurs when we attempt to interpret the images created by others. No useful information about the author will come to light because we just can't get inside another's head or heart. But we will find resonances in our own life, our own story.
I remember going to an art gallery here on the island last year and taking what I thought were casual shots of the sculptures. As I was shooting I was going for the color, the light, the beautiful detail. I wasn't aware of any emotional or personal component.
Until, that is, a few weeks later as I was looking through the images. One stopped me. I suddenly realized it was a perfect representation of the most significant and formative event of my life: my mother's abandoning me shortly after I was born. For many years we were imprisoned in completely separate boxes.
http://www.palcewski.com/images/mominabox.jpg
As for the sculptor, her name is Liselotte Wahl. She lived here in Ischia for a long time until her death in 1996. "Lilo remains in Italy until the end of her life," says a biographical note. "After years of wandering between cities and islands at the end she chose Ischia...[hers] is a sunny house, opening outwards, which she built piece-by-piece wrenching it from the dark and gloom of a suffocating historic centre...In this Ischia she lives to become both a legend and a local habit: many in the centre's streets still remember this 'Signora' always dressed like a Hollywood Star with coloured caftans and turbans, driving a small threee wheeled Ape van. Many remember her dogs. Others remember her kindness. Almost all, at the end of her life, judged her a little eccentric and if at the Bar in the centre someone says 'crazy' it's no wonder."
More of her sculptures are here:
http://www.palcewski.com/LW
John Forio d' Ischia, Italia http://www.livejournal.com/users/forioscribe
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