It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance…and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.
Henry James
As I mentioned previously, I’ve been reading Prague Pictures by John Banville and am relieved to find that my experience of Prague as indecipherable is not unique. But, as Banville’s title suggests, that isn’t the end of his musings. Banville finally begins to glimpse Prague through the photos of a long-time Prague resident: photographer Josef Sudek.
As an artist discovers and conveys the beauty in the ordinary, that ordinary reveals the soul of a place. But that is no small task for the artist.
I’ve found some cities to be more photogenic than others. I think what I mean by that is some cities are more willing to share their “ordinariness” than others. Some cities try very hard to hide that same quality (think Las Vegas, one of the most seemingly soulless places I’ve been); one of my favorite cities, New Orleans, wears it like a badge of honor.
To use a wine analogy: if you view good wine as a form of art, “terroir” would be that elusive quality – the typical or ordinary characteristics of a wine from that particular place – that good wine exhibits. And it’s that typical sense of a particular place that eludes the average traveler’s experience (at least this traveler) and leaves a lingering sense of having missed something obvious and important.
It’s in the eyes of the locals who glance at you furtively as you race from museum to cathedral to sidewalk café: as if to say, you won’t find it there, my friend, or not in a way that you’ll readily comprehend.
The traveler’s constant companion remains the frustration of disconnection, the outsider status that clings like stale smoke. The realization that you aren’t “from here” and you never will be. Today more than ever with an endless online landscape of photos and videos and first-person narratives, we feel like it should be easier to make that leap from tourist to local. “Seven days should be enough,” you say without acknowledging that all the superficial information in the world will not make up for the day-after-day, physical immersion required to reach a genuine understanding of a particular existence.