Continuing to look through my flickr stream to select my favourites is resulting in a lot of nostalgia. Years of photographs posted to flickr means I am in the process of compiling a document, a record of my life, of the life I share with my little family.
The one I have chosen for today was taken on a wonderful family holiday to Barcelona in 2010. My little boy was only a few months old and my little girl had just turned 3. We rented an apartment close to Las Ramblas and for the ten days we were there we endeavoured to be the best tourists we possibly could be. For me, and now also for my wife, Barcelona is the most beautiful, enthralling and wonderful European cities.
I adore its vibrancy, its colour, its streets, its warmth, its charm. It has everything. It has the Mediterranean sea meeting its city streets, it has a myriad of lanes and alleys, it has a meandering rambling boulevard heaving with city life, it has an unfinished symphony of a cathedral, it has squares, it has octagons, it has diagonals, it has the sun, it has the shade, It has the sin, the saving grace, the smells that linger, it has music filling its ancient squares, it has noise at every turn, it has water and light, it has beauty in its youth, it has sumptuous food, it has Montjuic, it has the Camp Nou, it has Messi, it has Xavi, it had Gaudi, it had Picasso, it had Maradona, it had Miro, it had the Olympics, it has fire – breathe it in, breathe it out – Barcelona! Writing this now makes me yearn to return. One day soon…
On that holiday, I took hundreds of photographs. If you could imagine the scene, it would be one of a mother pushing a buggy with a little toddler waddling along beside her and the father dawdling and lingering in the background, camera in hand, nervously trying to get that shot. The wife every now and then looking back to see, not where her little 3 year old may have gone, but as to what was delaying her husband; what the hell was he photographing.
The photograph I have chosen was taken on our walk back to the apartment; a walk through the old lanes of the Barrio Gotico. Here we have a couple. She sitting with her bicycle to her left and he standing, his body turned from her, his head turned to her. The body language powerfully describing their relationship in this moment. The distance between them will be filled with love or loss.
