A few years back, when I hit a wall in life, I found myself wandering around the seaside town of Aarhus, Denmark. I always liked walking; it helps my thoughts move. As I was roaming aimlessly – when lost there’s no point in trying to find a destination – I found myself stumbling upon and capturing pictures of these beautiful diversity of colorful walls in hidden alleys and streets. Walls, it was such a great metaphor.
Around the same time, I discovered and fell in love with poetry. As if suddenly, I had found a home to rest my feelings. Word paintings. Moments, snippets in time, capturing moods and thoughts.
It was an empowering process, visiting this colorful procession of walls.
More synchronicities showed up: a friend took me to a brick museum and showed me a tiny beach in southern Denmark where years back the faulted bricks of an old brick factory were disposed in the sea and since then have washed back upon the shore. A silent shoreline of faulted bricks. Brick Beach – pick up a faulted brick, place it back at the shoreline, let water soften its rough edges.
Brick by brick. The symbolism of walls. Walls build a home or form a boarder. It’s about breaking down or building up. About closely examining each brick to find out what the walls are made of. About facing walls and keep going anyway – knowing, this is a wall, this stops me from going through, and this awaits at the other side of the wall.
So yeah, I guess this collection of photo poetry ‘Brick by Brick’ was not a mere coincidence, it was a necessity. A celebration of finding walls.
All I need now, is a mural. Haha!
Wendy Garnier