Facts & Arguments is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Fifteen years ago, on one of my glorious stays in Italy, I took a summer vacation to the south, riding the rails from Pescara to Lecce, in a region known as the heel of Italy. The five-hour long ride zigzagged along the coast, the sparkling aquamarine waters of the Adriatic were on my left, green valleys of olive groves and vineyards were on my right and the Gargano peninsula was perched above me, its white-washed homes dotting the landscape like a string of polished opals on the delicate neck of this country. Constant sun, explosive colour, the scent of bougainvillea, rosemary, lemon and lavender drifting through the open windows.
After we arrived in the baroque city of Lecce, which felt more like Greece than Italy, we took a short bus ride out to a town called Otranto, the easternmost point, where the landscape is arid, the heat penetrating, the sea sapphire and the buildings blinding in their pristine whiteness.
After climbing to a particularly high point for a panoramic view of the seaside and its town, I paused to catch my breath and then positioned myself just so, in order to take the best photo of this panorama.
The stark contrast between white buildings and blue sea was so captivating I didn't want to miss an opportunity, just before noon, to capture the striking scene. The light was perfect and I was set to snap.
Unfortunately, just as I took out my camera, a woman approached from behind, and planted herself right in front of my view. Her back was toward me. Her body fit nicely into the stoney nook, a look-out perch, high above the sea. I did not see her face, but her gait, her fashion and her body language suggested that she was probably in her 50s.
She had ebony shoulder-length hair, carefree in its styling, and she wore a beach dress, a light material with fireworks of different coloured flowers painted throughout. She wore flat sandals and carried no purse, and as she studied the landscape in front of her, she would shift her weight from left to right, her slightly bent leg behind the stabilized foot, resting on the cobblestones beneath.
Like me, this woman, was here to stop, sigh and appreciate the view.
Because no one else was present, she felt as if this panorama was created for her eyes only. I understood that.
However, patient as I was, after 15 minutes or so, my camera scanning the sun and reviewing the shot I would eventually take, I grew frustrated.
Was it too much to ask? Taking just one picture of the landscape, without this lady obstructing my view? Sure, I could have just politely asked her to move, but something prevented me from doing so. She seemed so content, so serene, almost statue-like in her observation. I didn't want to mess with that.
And so, I simply stood still, five feet or so behind her, determined to wait and to let both of us engrave this memory into our consciousness.
Another 15 minutes passed and I grew weary. The sun had moved, my stomach was nagging me for food and the heat was beating down on top of my head … the head that wore no sun hat. The woman was still in her nook. I decided to take the photo anyway. And now when I look at it, I think her presence in the photo is what makes the image interesting. The landscape, beautiful on its own, somehow comes to life and breathes because this woman is engaging with it.
This photo, enlarged, hangs on a wall in my en-suite bathroom, directly above my soaker tub. It has been there since 2003, when my husband and I bought our home.
Bathing has always been a therapeutic ritual for me and sometimes, when I'm lying there, warm and inoculated from the mad world outside of my tub, I look up at that photo I snapped so many years ago. I think about who I was at that point in time, and I recall the majestic, unique beauty that unfolded before me.
Not surprisingly, I also think about that woman … that woman who "ruined" my photograph.
Where is she now? Is she still alive? Does she have a family? What brought her to that spot? Has she ever gone back to it? What would she think if she knew that her figure, blown up in a framed photo, is captured and frozen on some stranger's bathroom wall, in Burlington, Ont., Canada?
I chuckle. A bathroom, after all, is a very intimate space. My bathtub is my private sanctuary and some woman I don't even know has been immortalized above it; in some ways, she lives in my bathroom.
Perhaps we all live in each others' spaces. Perhaps we think we are more "stranger" than we actually are.
Perhaps this is what photos are for: to remind us that we all appreciate beauty, that we all share a common humanity, a common desire for pleasure, for connection, for affirmation that there is something greater than us.
That photo on my bathroom wall reminds me that two women stopped to take it all in that morning so many years ago. A captured moment, an unspoken conversation between two strangers, separated by a thin square of glass.
K.M. DeBon lives in Burlington, Ont.