Abandoned House, Nara

Luvin the juxtaposotion of the messiness and harshness against the warmth and glow of the back (or emergence of the back from behind the morbid(?) front). Seems to be an invitation for wild, unbridled, and unsubstantiated speculation. eg:

Is the mess a desecration of the beauty, or is the beauty blessing and forgiving the mess?

Is the mess a cancer; growing and consuming the beauty?

Is the tangled frivolity mocking the somber sobriety of the dignified senior shape?

I'm out of my depth here in trying to illustrate, but when a photo can cause even a straight, plodding mind like mine to get silly, then it is the mark of an exceptional work and vision.

An abandoned world, where aliens have taken over and covered the last remnants of humanity with their creepy weed (remember ‘War of the Worlds’!).

One person's discards becomes another's photographic treasures. Thanks for the gift, Jack.

Wow!!! A magical moment. I was changing between different programs on​ my computer, and in a single instant, I HAD to go back to check this entanglement of roots, stems, barks. It was so visually powerful and magnetic that when I opened to see it closer, my instinct was correct: It's Jack's unique trademark for bringing so close but so strikingly, an otherwise unnoticed part of life. DG

P.S. I HAD to come back to this photograph of yours.....I left something unsaid, and I'm sure I will still be unsettled for not being able to absorb all this portrais, through your very personal moment through the viewfinder. Ehhhhhemmmmm, what I was trying to say is that each individual, separate, unique element has a long story behind....Wow! DG

Thank you Wayne, Supriyo, Michael and Daniel (twice). These latest pictures are all from a trip to Nara on the second day of 2019. Nara, like much of the Japanese countryside, is being depopulated as younger people head to the cities for work. There are a growing number of abandoned homes, farm houses, schools and factories in countryside - great for photography; not so good for the society. Supriyo, I got a kick out of your War of the Worlds analogy. I remember those red tendrils covering the land in the movie. One last thought: there are stories everywhere; all of these containers and machines have a story to tell but there's no one to listen. We're much too much in a hurry to pay attention to their whisperings.