All images ©Gigi Cifali
In keeping with the water theme that sounds to be going on around here today, I have also posted some rather nice work from Italian born, London based photographer, Gigi Cifali.The work is entitled Absence of Water.
Asked about the project, he writes:
"Three years ago I started a project depicts the disappearance of the old swimming pools and baths in UK. In the Thirties United Kingdom' s baths and outdoors pools were at the peak of their popularity. Gradually tastes and necessities have changed, resulting in a drop in attendances,leaving the pools uneconomical to run. Many fell into decay and many were demolished. Only a handful of pools remain today as a symbol of a bygone era."He also kindly sent me a poem to accompany the images. Make of it what you will.
Without hard work
from this site I imagine movement in other dimensions
I feel coolness and roundness of nude bodies
touching themselves in the frank gesture of the game
I feel the sun, the water, the voices, the dive
I do not feel the time
hiding in the small wave
that is broken off the face of the curly-haired child
crying surprise and already wrapped
in the embrace of her mother's outstretched arms
I feel the fluidity of the water melting with the excited screams of
the adolescents
the fulfilled faces of the men afloat
the sensual stroke of the swimmer
the light speeches of warm summer
I myself, feel the need to take a swim!
Now I turn around and I try to reveal in the city this ancestral
aquifer's feeling
(I would love you to give me a swimming pool!)
thoughts of a citizen who is looking for his local swimming baths.
the sport, the meeting place, the community.........
behind this is the simple but magical contact with water.
This contact that rips away from the mayhem of the city evoking
a moment of pause, a sultry summer afternoon, another time,
another place.
Plunging into the amniotic fluids of secure liberty.
Here, every man needs to take a dip.
