Today’s Picture Winter prompt quotes Leonard Cohen: Everything has cracks in it. It’s how the light gets in, and asks us to look for cracks in the world around us. At the same time, Tracey Clark asks us on Shutter Sisters which words we are hearing lately and what images they inspire us to capture.
Outside, the snow is falling heavily, covering the city in white and obscuring the view and narrowing down the world outside to contain almost nothing but my own home and the surrounding buildings.
There are few things as still as a world covered in snow.
Suddenly, all these things come together in a burst of inspiration. Suzanne Vega’s song Cracking is now playing in my mind, a quiet little tune made powerful by her intense voice. The lyrics speak to me of winter and spring, the cold winter cracking open to let spring and sunlight through:
My heart is broken It is worn out at the knees Hearing muffled Seeing blind Soon it will hit the Deep Freeze /
And something is cracking I don't know where Ice on the sidewalk Brittle branches in the air /
The sun is blinding Dizzy golden, dancing green Through the park in the afternoon Wondering where the hell I have been
I start to wonder if all of this can be captured in a photograph. Can I find a way to portray both the stillness and cold of midwinter as well as the promise of spring inherent in these words?
I take a candle out in the snow on my balcony, and end up with the above image. It’s not what I had in my mind’s eye, I don’t know if it speaks the same way to anyone else, but to me it illustrates the hope that spring will arrive and crack open the icy hold of winter.
As Far As I Can Tell 