I think lazily of
swimming, on these summer afternoons, though I’d always rather sit on the shady
bank and watch others swim—just as I like to do my underwater photography with
a telephoto lens from far above the water’s surface.
This water of
Klimt’s is dreamy, alluring, with light dissolved in it. And the Impressionists always do
wonderful things with water and those around—and in—it.
Thinking of swimming, my mind drifts to the
mysterious Cave of the Swimmers at Wadi Sora in the Sahara, discovered by
Hungarian explorer Laszlo Almasy (made famous by Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient). Like me, the artists dreamed water from
a dry location far from the water, and that charms me as much as the little
lissome swimmers themselves.
images: Gustav Klimt, The Swamp
Pierre-Auguste
Renoir, Bathers
The Cave of the
Swimmers, Desert Planet
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