Lomography

Here's a story about an unexpected encounter with an open grave in the woods nearby Maribor in Slovenia. I didn't have a camera with me, so I bought the next day a Fujifilm QuickSnap Flash Disposable 35mm Camera and made these pictures.

I was participating in a media festival in Maribor in Slovenia where I stayed for a week to visit the festival and doing lectures about my computer installation. I also made trips into town and the surrounding areas. The story I made is based on a dream I had the night after I went to this grave. I adjusted the colors afterwards to put more emotion into the pictures.

As I was walking in the woods, somewhere in Slovenia, I suddenly came across this chapel hidden between the trees.

After I walked around this little temple, I decided to go inside.

I felt a strange, dangerous power of attraction.

I went inside, letting the atmosphere of this place come over me.

Inside, I see an open grave, no tombstone, only water.

Instead of staying, I decided to go back outside to find a stick. I think it was also to escape the heavy atmosphere inside.

Having found a stick, I go back inside. It is only then that I noticed that someone had put an egg in front of the grave. It’s a boiled egg with a cracked shell. My first impulse was to kick the egg into the water; it just lay there waiting for it.

Some strange power held me back from kicking the egg into the water. I fear if I did, I would endanger my own fate. The grave is laying there as a threatening open wound, waiting to suck some more life…

I walked to the other side of the grave moving in this place means constantly avoiding this sucking hole. In order to ward off this danger I push the stick into the water to examine the depth of this grave.

I was stunned. The grave is much deeper than I thought it would be, and also much wider. It reaches as far as underneath the stone floor that I was standing on. I twisted the stick through the water, waiting to see what might surface.

Instead of skulls and bones, dark water started coming up, spreading a suffocating smell…

I felt dizzy and saw red flashes and vague images. I tried to recognize them. My brain was reeling. Suddenly, I saw in a flash the face of a child. Then, it disappeared in a flash of violet/white light.

I managed to get back to reality and realized that I’ve put my hands on the floor to keep myself in balance. I still saw red flashes and I turned my eyes away from the water, away from this drawing power, then outside the window, hoping for some clarity.

Then, I saw the sky because this temple has no roof, as if some strange power has blown it off to ascend from this fiendish place.

I felt the power of the grave again and in between the red flashes I could see the doorway which will lead me outside.

I realized that the grave with the egg is in between me and the way out. I have to avoid them, but I still can’t see clearly, and I can hardly breathe.

As a blinded person, I followed the wall, by feeling it with my hands, approaching the doorway so I can avoid the grave and the egg.

At last, I felt the way out and the freshness of new air. I quickly stepped outside of the place into the woods
where children were gathering chestnuts which have fallen in the last couple of days.