Sunday 10 June 2012

Leper hospice

I suppose I was encouraged to put these photographs onto the blog - they were all taken during a visit to Spinalonga, an island just off Crete that was a Leper colony and which is now a "just a" community. The island hosts the derelict remains of a hospice that is fenced off as it is, very clearly, a crumbling ruin. I broke through the fence (not a difficult task) and went inside; I expected a scene similar to what I found and suspected that any photographs would be a metaphor for the disease it was once constructed to care for. It was now in a state similar to the way society dealt with the condition - and still does in certain parts of the world - that is a crumbling vestige of what it once was.













I'm not expecting to use these as part of my course, inasmuch as assignment material, however I thought I would put them here as part of a discussion as to whether the people, who once inhabited this place can be detected - even when their physical presence departed the building some many years ago.
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6 comments:

  1. Si Barber10 June 2012 at 23:04

    Very interesting John! The image with the shadow of the window bars is very evocative.

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    1. JSU11 June 2012 at 10:10

      Si, thanks for your comment, much appreciated.These shots had been left dormant for a while - not sure what drove me to resurrect them, maybe more time to think :)

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  2. Anonymous11 June 2012 at 14:49

    I visited there a few years ago and there was quite a lot of information dotted around about the people who lived there so, in that sense, they came alive for me. At first I felt angry that people were shut away on there but then I learned that it was a refuge for them and they came and went from the island. Victoria Hislop wrote a novel based on didn't she - I must read it.

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  3. JSU12 June 2012 at 08:27

    Thanks Catherine, I get the sense from your comment that you don't detect any sense of the people that were once there in these pictures - which is how I see them.

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    1. Anonymous16 June 2012 at 16:48

      I looked at my old photographs (taken with a small compact camera). All I had taken were views. I'm thinking now that it could be interesting to go back sometime with my new photographer eyes to see what I had missed.

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    2. JSU17 June 2012 at 16:15

      Catherine your comment made me look at my whole set from Crete on this trip. Sorry to say that I wasn't that impressed with what I had taken other than the Spinalonga set! Oh well, just goes to show how much we can learn

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