Shayan Afzal

As I reflect upon the photographic pursuits that have occupied my hours this year, there emerges from the multitude a single image, a tableau both sparse and profound, which I had the fortune to capture on an early morning that followed an evening of solitary navigation. This photograph, an exercise in the austerity of black and white, is indelibly marked by the presence of my own canoe, an extension of my being, left by the lake’s edge where I had resigned it the night prior after a voyage of quiet reflection upon the placid waters.

Upon revisiting the scene at the break of dawn, I was met with a vision that seemed to be waiting for me, as if the night itself had conspired to leave behind a trace of its whispered secrets. The canoe, a silent testament to the previous night’s meanderings, lay in repose, the very embodiment of the serenity I had experienced under the cloak of the starlit sky. It rested there, a solitary figure on the cusp of land and water, as if it were a thought left unspoken, a sentence left unfinished, evoking the lingering embrace of the night’s solitude.

In the foreground, the earth presented itself in a textural symphony, each granule of sand imbued with the memory of my nocturnal expedition. The choice of monochrome to capture such a scene seemed to me as natural as breathing, for the night had been draped in shades of gray and whispers, and the photograph became a mirror to that dimly lit world.

This image, which I now count amongst the most precious of this year’s endeavors, is more than a mere representation of a moment in time. It is an ode to the silent dialogue between the self and the vast expanse of the universe, a dialogue that was carried by the gentle currents of the lake and echoed in the stillness of my canoe. It stands as a visual sonnet to the profound tranquility of that evening, an evening that continues to resonate within me, each time I gaze upon the still life it has begotten.