Amour, the most "french" word and one of the most meaningful as well. Love is a lot of things, and I don't think I'll ever be able to fully understand it's extent until my death. But my small experiences and my exchanges with others help me learn to love and be loved, because that's the greatest thing you'll ever know (For those who have the reference).
The idea
I cross this eye-catching sign quite often, and to miss it, you'd have to try your best. I've always been intrigued by its intrinsically "out of place" nature. Like a misfit, your attention is always drawn to how unfit the overly dramatic sign is in this rather unrelated setting. It does, however, make me think of love every time I come across it.
Love is a phenomenon that breaks the boundaries of this world. It's strong, whether it'd be in the positive or negative way. It changes people, it makes them do unreasonable things, and it makes them break their limits.
Love is neither good nor bad, it's a neutral phenomenon that sometimes feeds something good or bad.
Love tells the story of something bigger than us, bigger than what science, money, or reason can explain.
Love is expressed in as many different ways as there are relations in this world.
Love is fragile and yet strong. It's often born out of a spark of "luck" that pulled two people together in the right direction at the right moment. This notion of "the right" conditions is what makes love so valuable.
It's also a mistake to think love it what you need. Most of the time, what people require is care, kindness, a hand, or an ear to listen to them.
Love is beautiful, but love is hard. Love is sometimes wrong. To love is not to solve all our solution, love is the start to growing together. Love makes us grow by challenging ourselves.
Love is opening yourself completely to someone throughout trust.
I think the idea many (including myself) have about love is highly misguided by the idea that love is simple and that it is simply there. Love is nurtured, cared for, looked upon with reason. And love evolves. Love is never in a static state of constant being. Love takes varying forms throughout a relationship. What you love about somebody may also change over time. Love is meant to make you discover things you don't know. Love may even lead you to realize you love no longer.
As said earlier, I most probably know nothing about love. So I'll leave it to those who might just know a little better, and are much better at expressing their thoughts than I am.
A poem attributed to Roy Croft (a probable pseudonym for Mary Carolyn Davies):
I love you, not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.
I love you, not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me.
I love you, for the part of me that you bring out. I love you, for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart, and passing over all the foolish, weak things that you can’t help dimly seeing there, and for drawing out, into the light, all the beautiful belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.
I love you, because you are helping me to make of the lumber of my life not a tavern, but a temple. Out of the works of my every day, not a reproach, but a song.
I love you, because you have done more than any creed could have done to make me good, and more than any fate could have done to make me happy.
You have done it without a touch, without a word, without a sign. You have done it by being yourself. Perhaps that is what being a friend means, after all.
The technique
I went for an underexposed image so as not to see the surround area, delimiting the outside of the words with just the glow of the neon. In the editing room, I pull down the shadows and darks, playing around until I found the idea of masking the environment, leaving enough for the imagination as we can see the leaves of the environing trees. I first thought about completely hiding the street, but then, wouldn't it have been easier to do the letters on a vector graphics software ? I thought the words left there in the middle of the darkness of the world gave weight to its meaning. Love is not something to be taken lightly. It's a word bound by strength, splendor, hope, dreams...
I had taken the photo on the wrong side of the sign because I wanted the wall of the building to the left of the photo, and because the composition on that side is much better. But I wanted to get the letters in the right side. However, I wasn't satisfied with was I was doing when. Flipping it to the right side didn't bring anything to the picture, since that just meant having a few letters on a black backdrop, but as I played around, I felt the strangeness of this word flipped to tell a story of something off. Flipping it wasn't enough, I wanted to represent the fragility of the word, its default to many, and the void it creates in some.
That is when I decided to glitch the picture by copying the image - in this case, I pulled out the red channel to the side, making it look like I only copied the words, but this helped me do so in the fastest way possible since I didn't have to contour the neon sign. By copying the main layer and displacing rectangles of the newer, most in front layer, I created the notion of TV glitching, strengthening the effect. By the way, did you notice only the sign is glitched? It's the only thing set there out of context by something unreal.
Tools
Camera: Canon 1300D
Lens: 18-55 mm
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