For my creative project on Elizabeth Bishop’s “In the Waiting Room” I chose to take a photo. I took this photo using two of my friends as models. The photo is composed of a Friday night sunset and also includes one of my friends taking a photo of my other friend taking a photo of the sunset. This photo also includes the beautiful sunset that seems to come very often and simultaneously once in a blue moon. This photo really connects with “In the Waiting Room” because of the subject matter of the poem being simultaneously the viewer and the viewed.
Bishop writes about a young girl’s realization about coming of age and her emotional maturation while stuck in the body of a child. I chose a sunset as the subject matter as it functions as a similar stage in the day as adolescence in the lifetime of a child. Sunsets are an almost liminal space in the area of space-time. I was inspired by this line, “I said to myself: three days and you'll be seven years old. I was saying it to stop the sensation of falling off the round, turning world into cold, blue-black space.” I chose to model this literally, the sun we spin around bringing a little bit of beauty into the world. Darkness is beginning to envelop the sky, but the sun puts up one last protest and fights to bring a little more beauty and life to the earth. So, I found that a sunset would be the perfect time of day to encapsulate the liminal space that Bishop transports both the narrator and the reader into.
The most important aspect of the photo are the two people that I pictured. The most important aspect of their persons in this photo is that you cannot see their faces. This was intentional as it leaves who they actually are as unknown and it can allow the viewer to transport the viewer into the photo. For the human aspect of my photo I was inspired by this line “I knew that nothing stranger had ever happened, that nothing stranger could ever happen.” The strangeness of taking a photo of someone taking a photo stuck with me. I didn’t actively take a photo of the beautiful sunset in front of me, rather the people in front of me. Their anonymity adds to the same intrigue that holds the reader of the poem in limbo. Being disconnected, as they are not actively being photographed, but also in the same world. Unable to look away but unable to make a real impact in the world. The only role that they can have is to be a viewer. Being a photographer instead of the photographer means that they exist in the world but are actually stuck as an observer, the change happens around them. Change continues on, but the photographers can only capture the moment much like the girl in the waiting room can only experience the world around her, but unable to impact a real change.