The bench

“The bench is the model of the world. Everything revolves around the bench. Love-starved couples, who have no place to go, seek for the bench; the life of alcoholics and homeless – for whom it is a home, a table, a toilet and a bed – is absolutely impossible without the bench; the kids incessantly carve the bench; the students try to make up for the gaps of their knowledge before the exams on the bench; old people live their last days on the bench. Zhenya Kotenko choose his bench not in the street, in the boulevard or in the park. He found his own bench in the yard of their own house, this battered bench, painted first sky-blue and then deep red (or vice versa) by the caretaker, living a continuous present of the apocalypse.”

Andrei Tekila

Several readers have posted links to Kotenko’s post with similar photo series, which, however, counterpoint by way of a negative example Kotenko’s sensitivity of situations. I would not even mention them, had I not noticed, by browsing one of them, a character I each time see in Lwów, but have never managed to clarify the purpose of his dress. And by scrolling back to the header, the series was indeed made along the promenade of Lwów. On whose ever-changing symbolism during the past hundred years we will soon come back with a new post.