Marina

Marina Galli da Bino 1950 - 2009

Saint Andrew's Pots

The thirtieth of November is St Andrew's Day, Scotland's national day. This is usually celebrated quietly enough, with a supper. There would be haggis and other traditional dishes like herring in oatmeal. In all likelihood, a Scottish trifle, which is an extravagance borrowed from the French, would be on the menu. No supper would be complete without a piper and, as on Burns night, the haggis would be led into the hall by a piper. The main dish is simple peasant fare and none the worse for that. But it takes many pots to make it - as you can see. St Andrew, the apostle, was a fisherman and he is believed to have been crucified in Greece. Some years after AD300, for safekeeping, most of his bones were later moved to Scotland - because to King Constantine this was "at the ends of the earth". From there, some remains were taken to Amalfi in Italy but some fragments were returned to Scotland in 1879 and yet more recently in 1969. As a fisherman, Saint Andrew would certainly have been familiar with herring in oatmeal. So here's wishing everyone in the old country a very pleasant evening of food and poetry in the Year of Homecoming.

Hey Ho, the wind and the rain

The rain rained nearly all day, very much the Sunday to stay inside. Feste's bleak song "When that I was and a Tiny Little Boy" is the close of the comedy, Twelfth Night and a stanza is sung also, if I recall, by the fool. In Shakespeare, only a few types gets to speak the truth, however unpalatable. Fools, drunkards and wordly rude mechanicals may speak the bitter truth. Comedy is not real life. A great while away the world began/With hey ho the wind and the rain,/But that's all one, our play is done/and we'll strive to please you every day. Feste tries unsuccessfully to send the audience away happy with this bitter song. It was hard to please you on a day such as this. I had little hope of that when venturing out when the rain stopped. Like the song in the play, this image is a last minute bid for applause on a bleak winter's afternoon.

Deep Blue Science

I took this shot some years ago on a visit to Knightsbridge or "museum land" as I like to call it. It's in the Blue Cafe of the Science Museum, which I have featured before. Well worth a visit on its own, it has its own beer (in a deep blue bottle, naturally). This shot was taken at a very low shutter speed so the subjects have moved a little, giving themselves a lovely halo. I'd like to say it was intentional. But I never paid the image much attention until I took a second look recently and cropped the picture a bit. The mother and daughter are looking intently at something and I cannot remember what this was. But there is some kind of dynamic between the two. In mythology, Demeter and Persephone were the mother and daughter of Eleusian mysteries. Persephone was Demeter's daughter by Zeus and the bond was so strong that when Persephone was abducted by Hades, Demeter made the whole world barren. She searched and searched for her daughter and when she discovered her, she did a deal with Hades allowing Persephone to stay some time in the underworld and the rest with her mother. Kerenyi (Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter) argues that this is part of woman's search for completion and for all people's search for identity. It's a few years on now for my two subjects. I can't help wondering how they are.

Otherworld Sunset

The immortal sun descends nightly to the kingdom of the dead ... his throne is like the fiery flame and his wheels as burning fire. Not at all original but at least the combination is mine. The latter is from the Aramaic Zohar and the first is from Mircea Elieade Patterns In Comparative Religion. The sun guides souls through the lower regions and brings them back to light. This photograph is from my archives and was taken on one of a number of return trips to the city I called home for nearly a quarter of a century. When you see this kind of shot emerging there is no time to lose - the sun falls fast on its journey at this stage. It was a Central American belief that the sun passes through the kingdom below unharmed. Effectively for the dead, it's only visiting. Shamans endow the eagle with these solar properties. Feeding the Eagle with sacrificial offerings was apparently a way in which to nourish the sun. So perhaps when I ran out to take this photograph I was feeding the eagle, nourishing the sun so that it would return the morrow's morn.

Red Dog Hello

The dog looks like it's saying "Hello!" Blackrock Shopping Centre is a place I return to regularly although some of it's charms have disappeared over the years. Not this one though. I appreciate the fact that children still like to go on these rides and it reminds me that we all need to play sometimes. I am also advised that Jarvis Cocker finds it easy to find the child within, it's the adult within that's the problem. So he says anyway. Here, the dog is playful and faithful, unlike the terrifying dogs of mythology. Cerberus was the many-headed dog on guard at the entrance to Hades. In one story Orpheus put Cerberus to sleep and Hercules managed to capture him without weapons. Dogs are very special to us so I propose to call this dog Cerby. Next time you're in Blackrock, pop in and say hello to Cerby.

Bollard Art

This is on Mespil Road, just round the corner from the Guinness Gallery. That's why I granted the ordinary street object the status of art. I passed a lot of cafe tables that day, all with small droplets of rain - and they did look pretty. But somehow the bollard appealed. The drops looked like small creatures on the black surface. Strange to think that no matter how pretty, they are responsible for the peeling paint and the emerging rust on the metal surface. In Christian and Jewish symbolism, water is the beginning of creation. If we did not have this rain, the land would be barren. Water symbolises life itself and these creatures are the materia prima, no more so than because the rain changes and fertilises wherever it touches. Fortunately, we have no shortage of rain in Ireland!