Bed Event 2016

Elina Brotherus made this photograph, "Bed Event," sometime in the last few years. The event is quite subtle, but the rumpled sheets tell their own story, don’t they? I imagine Brotherus finding beauty in the everyday. She probably woke up, maybe she even made the bed, and then noticed something special about this very ordinary scene. The light must have been just right, casting those shadows that give the whole composition a soft, dreamy feel. What was it like to see this with fresh eyes and really want to show it to other people? Those pillows—they're not just pillows, are they? They’re like characters in a play. The one on the right seems all prim and proper, while the other is slouching, ready for another nap. Then there’s the shadow that looks like a punctuation mark, a little pause in the narrative. It's like Brotherus is asking us to stop and consider the poetics of a space where we are at our most vulnerable and human. It is wonderful.