On Mediterranean Shores
After two years of constraints on travelling abroad, it was a particular pleasure to be able to spend three weeks in France this summer.
There is always a moment as you travel south through France, either hurtling along ever more expensive Autoroutes or a little more slowly (and cheaply) on Routes Nationale, when the light changes. The grey or blue of the sky lightens, clouds change shape and the architecture announces that you are getting close to the shores of the Mediterranean.
It is always a heady moment for a photographer schooled in the hard northern light of Britain to savour the colours, the deep black shadows and the riotous patterns that seem innate to so many parts of southern Europe. It is different - and welcomely so - even if the intensity of the light presents a host of challenges for making photographs that are not full of blocked shadows or blown highlights!
For one of our weeks, we returned to Collioure, a charming town in the far south-west corner of France that almost feels as though you have already arrived in Spain. It is famous for attracting Fauvist painters in the early part of the last century; notably Salvador Dali, Georges Braque and André Derain. They were drawn, not only by the luminous light that floods the narrow streets of Collioure’s old town, but also by the blocky shapes and strong lines of its buildings.
Today, Collioure is very much a tourist town - but not so much as to lose its inherent attraction. Everyone is snapping away, and with good reason. Who can resist the palette of pastel colours and the warm Mediterranean water lapping at the very foot of the dramatic Chateau Royal?
This trip wasn’t really about photography. It was a holiday. But I too could not resist the challenge of trying to capture the light, the luminosity, the colour, and the warmth of Collioure’s streets. And so to this quiet corner complete with its plastic bird silently trying to keep the local pigeons at bay.
It works for me mainly, I think, because it feels as though it is an image which has literally been unfolded in front of me. It also gives me a sense of what attracted those Fauvist painters, with their strong eye for geometry and colour.
I am as much a sucker for images of colourful Mediterranean streets as the next person, but I believe this particular picture gets closer to understanding why the Catalan denizens of Collioure haven’t simply painted their houses white. There is an artist in every one of us and these harmonious blocks of colour say this so simply and elegantly.
I am always trying to convey the emotion of the moment and to suggest, not only how a scene looked at the moment an image was made, but also how it felt to be there, how it sounded, even how it smelt.
This is no cold, damp afternoon on an English street. It is a warm, quiet moment that overwhelms my visual senses. As autumn draws upon us, I know it is an image I will return to with pleasure for the happy memories it evokes and the promise it holds of a future return to the pleasures of Mediterranean shores.
