In the air

On the way up the Vatnajökull glacier in Island’s Skaftafell National Park

Spread-out clothes have a special magnetism on any photographer. Throughout our post we have instinctively collected a large number of images of clothes spread out on balconies, patios and alleys of the places we know. We have realized this strange attraction when the Spreading-Out Blog by Zsófi Porkoláb did us the honor of linking one of our posts. And at the same time we also realized how this topic, exactly because of this magnetism, is menaced by trivialism.

Heimaey, in the Vestman Islands, about which we will soon tell a story.

What is not trivial, instead, is to spread out clothes in Island. There, in early August we could only catch these few images.

Just at the entrance of the beach of black pebbles, where the famous basalt columns of Reynisdrangar raise, a few kilometers from Vík. In the background, the glacier of Mýrdal.

Heimaey

Heimaey. The inheritance of the national hero Eiður Guðjohnsen is the hallmark of the line.

Heimaey

This farm near Höfn, south of Iceland, was the home of a fisherman. After his death, his sons found another function for the old nets, buoys, floats and whalebones. Note the prominence of the trunks and branches in a land where there are hardly any trees.

What would this song be like if it were written by an Icelandic singer instead of the Catalan Feliu Formosa?


Hèctor Vila: «Cançó de la roba estesa» (Song of the spread-out clothes). From the CD Port d’amour.

La roba estesa de la gent pobra, als patis foscos i als descampats coneix l’angoixa dels dies grisos, sap l’enyorança del temps gastat. Roba cosida en nits de vetlla, roba comprada als encants vells, roba tenyida de color negre, roba arreglada d’algun parent. Roba donada per la gent rica, roba pispada d’algun terrat, roba perduda i retrobada, roba heretada dels avantnats.

hanging clothes of poor people in dark patios in empty lots they know the anguish of the gray days the longing for the time lost clothes sewn in sleepless nights clothes purchased in the flea market clothes of color black spread out clothes seized by a relative clothes ceded by rich people clothes swipe off from some terrace clothes lost and found again clothes inherited from the ancestors

Roba enterrada i ressuscitada, roba menjada pels detergents, roba sargida i apedaçada, roba bufada per tots els vents. Roba bandera de causa inútil, roba cansada de treballar, roba que plora sobre els qui passen, roba que crida pels seus forats. Als patis foscos dels barris pobres la roba estesa va degotant, coneix l’angoixa dels dies grisos, sap l’enyorança del temps gastat.

clothes buried and resuscited clothes eaten up by detergents clothes patched mended and sewn clothes fanned in all the winds clothes, flags of useless causes clothes, tired of working any more clothes weeping on the passers-by clothes screaming through their holes in the dark patios of poor neighborhoods the hanging clothes are dripping they know the anguish of the gray days the longing for the time lost