Mike Broadway – PhotoBlog

The Paddler - Iona, Scotland - 2006

I am chuffed; Fotomoto has selected my Edge of the Unconscious picture as their “featured image” for today, April 2! It will be interesting to see if that leads to any income for Save The Children but if it doesn’t straight away, well, every bit of exposure helps. At least someone thought well enough of it to allow it to represent Fotomoto for the day.

The Paddler photograph above was made two shots later on the same afternoon and from the same vantage point on the ferry quay, Iona, Scotland. The sunlit aquamarine could be the Caribbean backdrop for a super model fashion shoot but instead it is in the North Atlantic and she is an everywoman archetype; a stand in for all of us that would rather be paddling than working in the office this April second. For this brief moment she was doing what every tired mother dreams of when the laundry still needs to be folded and the three year old upstairs just awoke, coughing.

Edge of the Unconscious

I don’t think I would ever single out one photograph that I have made as the most significant or pleasing to me, but if I was forced to pick my top five then this would probably be the first one I selected.

The picture was taken on a July day in the summer of 2006. The right half of the picture is filled with a concrete boat ramp that stands next to the main ferry dock on the island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland. The dark lines to the right of the man are the shadows of the railings of the main dock. The rings set in the concrete are used to tie up smaller boats as they load and unload passengers or fishing gear. That is how the picture came about but that is not what it means for me; this is not a holiday snap for the family album.

Detail

The man contemplating the water is older than I am but not by so many years that I cannot identify with him. At first sight he is overweight but that is an illusion, mostly, caused by the positioning of his left arm. He is barefoot; appropriate for a tourist paddling at the seaside but maybe he is something else? Maybe he has been shipwrecked or maybe he is on a pilgrimage in shoe-less penance? Those might be pajamas he is wearing; he might be in a hospital awaiting tests? It is hard to see in the full picture but in the detail, shown to the right, you can make out a bag around his shoulder – he is on a journey.

Water and the sea can be symbols for many things. In Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the ocean is a woman to be loved and honored but also “something that gave or withheld great favours.” The sea is the original source of life and continuing source of food, a parent, yet it offers no guarantees or compassion. The sea grants and then takes away Santiago’s prize.

In dreams, Carl Jung wrote, the sea is a symbol of our Collective unconscious, “because unfathomed depths lie concealed beneath its reflecting surface.” When you cross the sea you do not know what lies under you; you cannot see where you are going or where you came from. The sea represents the unknown and the unknowable; the sea represents mystery.

In Christian baptism, going down into the water symbolizes death. Walking on water is the test set by Jesus of Peter’s faith and trust. At least Peter tried.

Perhaps this man is waiting for Charon the ferryman to take him across to Hades? The rings might be used to chain reluctant passengers but this man is not tied, he will not run.

You can read your own story from this picture. I choose to see a man on the edge of the unknown, aware of both beauty and danger but trusting the beauty more. A man taking a moment to think back over his life before continuing on the road forward, with Van Morrison, Into the Mystic.