Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Etats d'Ame . . .

As you can well imagine, when I took this photo I was interested exclusively in the texture in the brick wall. Well, maybe the athleticly inclined young lady in her Levi's jeans played a small part. . . But in fact, now that I'm seeing a full screen image of this shot for the first time in over 20 years after shooting this image on a trip to Quebec in 1988, it is obvious there was another house attached to the building here, which had since been torn down. The roofline is still visible. What amazes me here is that the chimney in the torn down house must have been close to the wall, and the years of smoke coming out left a clear soot trace including the direction of the prevailing winds there. . . looks a bit like a volcano blowing ash. . . what do you think ?
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3 comments:

Nathalie H.D. said...

Indeed!

In fact maybe the house ended up in a fire, hence the very dark soot marks on the wall.

I can't recall ever seeing such chimney smoke marks on a wall before, you don't normally position a chimney so close to a wall, the draft would be too poor.
(is "draft" the right word for "tirage"?)

Of course one's attention is immediately drawn to the brick wall and not to the lady performing athletics on the ad, LOL!

I can see you work as late at night as I do. Enjoy Brittany when you go. I haven't been back for 20 years now. My travels have taken me elsewhere...

Owen said...

Yeah, I'm a night owl... hoooo, hoooo... could well be the place burned down and tatooed the wall with smoke from the final fire... and yes, "draft" gets the message across for "tirage"... although draft for draft, I prefer draft beer ! LOL ! Or a rough draft of a poem written in a corner room in my dream house... bonne nuit...

Loulou said...

It IS a volcano blowing ash ;-)