I came across this photo while perusing an old folder. Remembering that I considered posting it at one point, I half-convinced myself that I must have, but after checking past posts under a bunch of keywords I decided I never did.
What struck me at the time was the stand-out redness of the chair and the fire extinguishers in an otherwise dull, colorless alley. That, and of course, the fact the chair was crammed upside-down between the ladder and the wall. I "credit" my OCD for forcing me to glean out all sorts of relationships between things that don't normally have anything to do with each other -- one might say it's something along the lines of, seeing meaningfulness in an acausal synchronicity -- and the meaning I see here is its own opposite; a visual metaphore for meaninglessness.
Consider: the function of a chair is to provide a stable platform as it rests on a floor or on the ground -- it loses its meaning when, absurdly, it has been turned upside down several feet off the ground. Likewise, the four fire extinguishers huddled under it behind the ladder seem almost as if they had been deliberately stowed away in a troublesome location out in an alley, when they should be in readily accessible spots indoors. I note also that the ladder has been rendered unfunctional by having a metal plate spot-welded in its bottom portion.
The chair, the fire extinguishers and the ladder -- all three elements here have been deprived of meaning individually, but ironically that is what invests them with a collective, desultory meaning of self-abnegation.
More could be said, but perhaps a rare, rational measure of self-restraint is called for here.
