Entry no.: 1142

28 Aug 2010, 2:58 PM

Tags: analog photography (film), black and white, Bucharest, Leica, quotations

Comments: 0

Photography Imperial and forlorn like King Michael saying goodbye to Communist Romania

Bucharest. © Cristian ·Kit· Paul. Click here or on the image to enlarge.

I found the title in a Leonard Cohen's novel from 1966. Here is the paragraph—you'll see why it stuck.

The telephones kept their steady black, the one stable shape in the shifting gloom. They hung there like carved masks, black, gleaming, smooth as the toes of kissed stone R.C. saints. We were sucking each other's fingers, slightly frightened now, like children pulling at lollipops during the car chase. And then one of the telephones rang! It rang just once. I am always startled when a pay phone rings. It is so imperial and forlorn, like the best poem of a minor poet, like King Michael saying goodbye to Communist Romania, like a message in a floating bottle which begins: If anyone finds this, know that —

—Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers.

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