On (sun)piles – pictures and text by Alina Andrei
Photographers would call a pile of sunrays flare. I prefer to call it sun pile, sun bunch or sun puddle – that depends on how the light crashes on people’s head or on the mood I am in. Photographers also say that a flare is a clear sign that the camera was not handled with care. The good people will think immediately that a sort of accident has happened: the photographer knows how to work with the camera, but the sun pile has mistakenly and quietly insinuated itself into the lens and now it’s simply in the picture. They would never ever think that the human being who’s shooting the bunches, is making it on purpose, literally hunting for them. I am that human being.
To my surprise I found out that a flare is actually a flaw and that the high tech cameras have anti flare lens. I have to admit that I had no idea whatsoever about this when I first photographed this kind of pile. That happened last year. I had to take some pictures of a future fashion model, so that she would look good in one of those colorful province tabloids.Only that I’m not really good at something like that and I also didn’t feel like it. I thought it would be more interesting to photograph her hidden in the grass while reassuring her that, yes, you could see her perfectly and yes, she had to smile. I loved the way sun was coming down and I thought the sun belonged into the picture. Since then, I’m hunting for sun piles. I photographed them on the heads of the people passing by in Brasov and Sibiu, melting on some garbage men, tickling the ear of a colleague.
On the wall of a cemetery, around 7 pm, you can see lots of sun puddles falling. The people who walk by have absolutely no clue that they practically have to find their way among the sun rays.There’s no way they could know, because they are only visible from the sidewalk where me and my camera are. When I see the sun bunches, I think about the stories of Boris Vian, therefore I find really unfair that there is absolutely no mouse propping the wall, that the clouds won’t follow people or that the houses behind the cemetery won’t shrink because of the unhappiness of the people living in them. Sometimes I am really annoyed that nobody seems to see the sun piles. It’s a shame, maybe the people would actually be glad to know they bear something like that on their heads. Some other times I am happy to be the only one who sees them. My sun piles are like the maliets of Vian, at least I think so. Boris Vian whispers from a corner:
“It’s such a shame that people don’t see the maliets the way I’m seeing them, said Jacquemort to himself, and maybe I don’t see them, the way I’m saying I see them, but in anycase, one thing is sure: if you don’t see the maliets, you must at least pretend you can see them. Actually, they are so very visible that it would be ridiculous not to see them.”
Tutu tuuu, it’s him again, from some other corner, from the very sunpuddle. You cannot see him, but hear him:
“Maliets dying as soon as you touch someone’s finger, so very cushy, your feathers cannot be touched, dying because of everything, because somebody is looking too intense at you, because he laughs looking at you, because he turns his back an you or he lifts his hut, because the night likes to be waited for, because the evening arrives too soon.”
It’s all over now, Mr. Vian has grown silent.
I could have written more about sun piles, but I’m waiting for the better ones.
Alina Andrei
