Crude Metaphors 203 - Part 1

[Hotshoe Magazine]

Crude Metaphors Part 1 Issue 203: Southern The Right Spot Photographs by John Chiara Text by Adam Ganz   The pine plank smelt as fresh and clean as the day he first walked into her office and his heart caught fire. As a child she’d moved around from one Air Force base to the next. Her parents were pilots, and that instilled in her a sense of impending doom. He found that familiar, though he never told her why. When people asked where she was from, she said “Sun Prairie, Wisconsin”.   It wasn’t true of course. She always added: “That’s where Georgia O’Keefe was born.” It was a reminder that where you come from isn’t necessarily where you belong. He eased the wood plane across the pine in a smooth mechanical motion. The wood curled up in shavings like tiny slow flames. Her chestnut hair on the pillow beside him.  The light of the morning sun. A happiness he’d never known. Most intense when they danced, he knew exactly where to meet her in the music. She held his hand and told him everything was going to be all right. And he believed her.  He wasn’t much of a carpenter, but this didn’t need to be true. It only needed to be fast enough to hold the light when it entered the darkness. That wasn’t so difficult, surely. As the black cling-film unrolled across the cardboard, it wrinkled like the surface of the moon. He pressed it down. It was satisfying, something so black. That was the only way to stop time. People can leave. But light can’t leave once it’s trapped on the paper like an insect in amber. When you get to know a place in great detail, he thought, it becomes part of you. Familiar. You know all its secrets. You see not just what is there but what used to be – those trees that fell in the storm, the ghostly structures before the buildings that replaced them. You remember the exceptional, the glut of apples, and the scorching summer, and also the days that were just like every other.  When you love a person you see their body as a place. The curve of an ear, the pattern of freckles on their back – these are the distinctive marks that you know like nobody else can.  He thought of the blue birthmark at the base of her spine the colour of faded ink, which lay just above her buttocks like an oxbow lake. Now he slept alone he tried to remember his way around her body from mole to birthmark, to tiny childhood scar, just as he used to try to recall the pathway through the woods to school before dropping into dreaming. When she had lain beside him with his head on her stomach there was no sense of beyond. All he could see from every angle was her and that was all he ever wanted to remember.  Stay tuned for Part 2! The Crude Metaphors section of Hotshoe has been a prominent and celebrated section of the magazine since 2005. Here we bring together photography and writing, pairing a photographer and a writer to produce a narrative, written in response to a chosen series of images. We hope you enjoy it! All images © John Chiara ­ We are looking forward to returning to Paris Photo as a partner again this year from November 13th to the 16th. It's always a great time to catch up with friends and colleagues, and to see all the wonderful exhibitions and beautiful bookstores that Paris has to offer.  You can book your ticket for the fair and read up on all the details here. And while we are there, on Sunday November 16th we will be hosting a Process Walk in Paris with Wesley Verhoeve of Process Substack. Below is a bit more information but if you would like to register or get more details, you can do so here. Join photographer Wesley Verhoeve, publisher of Process, the most popular weekly newsletter for photographers, for an intimate photo walk through Paris' most photogenic neighborhoods. This will be the 13th Process Photo Walk, and the second one in beautiful Paris during Paris Photo and will be co-hosted by local analog photographer Matthieu Quatravaux and Hotshoe Magazine, and made possible in part by MPB. We hope to see you in Paris at the fair or on the walk! ­ Starting October 24, 2025, the Neues Museum Nürnberg (NMN), in collaboration with The PhotoBookMuseum, Cologne, will present the first major retrospective of British photographer and Magnum member Martin Parr’s photobooks. Since the 1980s, Parr has captured the absurdities of global consumer and leisure culture like no one else, translating them into a distinctive visual language. With an unflinching eye and a touch of humour, the photobooks featured in GRAND HOTEL PARR reveal a bizarre world of pomp and kitsch, four-star luxury and all-inclusive resorts, crossing social boundaries and national identities. The exhibition space itself is transformed into a British seaside hotel, complete with red carpeted floors and veneer-panelled walls, creating an immersive setting that invites visitors to explore the hotel’s facilities and browse Parr’s photobooks in the“Reading Lounge”. For more info follow the link here! ­ Hotshoe International hotshoemagazine.com Facebook Instagram Unsubscribe