By Michael Hooper
For some reason, I’m drawn to sadness. When someone talks about a struggle, I can usually relate because I am a person of feeling.
Perhaps the pain of others resonates with me because of my own pain, anguish and sorrow.
I feel somehow drawn to an 1867 photograph titled Iago, by Julia Margaret Cameron, a photographer who produced over 900 photographs, including portraits of Charles Darwin and Henry Taylor.
Her father ran a coffee plantation in Ceylon. She raised 11 children, six adopted, she has heirs living today.
She didn’t start photography until she was 48. Her husband was going back to the plantation and she was home in England. Her daughter and son-in-law gave her a camera so she would have something to do while her husband was away.
At first she struggled to get one good photograph. Her technique was the wet collodion process, which uses glass plates rather than paper for emulsion.
Photography was a laborious process in those days, complex and even dangerous (juggling noxious chemicals and light-sensitive glass negatives). Eventually she perfected her technique and style. When she purchased a new lens in 1866 she began producing atmospheric head-and-shoulder portraits, of which Iago is a fine example, according to Robert Wilkes in this article.
I like her photography, because it represents an artist at work creating stories with people.
When I saw the picture of Iago, I was immediately drawn to it. For some reason, I could feel his sadness and despair. I could feel even penitence and sorrow. I think in all of us is a wrongdoing, that we regret. We make mistakes, and we try to make up for them, but somehow our sins of the past always seem to follow us. Sometimes you get to the point of no return, like no new vow is going to change a thing.
Iago was the villain in the Shakespeare play 'Othello'. Initially Cameron's sitter in this portrait was identified as the artist's model, Angelo Colarossi (born about 1839). However, it is possible that sitter may have been another Italian model, Alessandro di Marco, who also worked with British artists during the 1860s.
I love Italy. I’ve been there twice; once with alternative rock band For Against in 2008, the Italians rolled out the red carpet for the band, Jeff Runnings, Harry Dingman and Nick Buller. We were given the royal treatment including wonderful dinners with beautiful people, it was like La Dolce Vita, the movie by Federico Fellini, probably one of the best movies of all time, capturing the beauty and sorrow of living
Like Fellini and Cameron, they both know how to capture a look, the feeling of something beautiful yet haunting at the same time.
Iago looks penitent. Perhaps he is sorry for his history of crime and violence? It seems unusual that I am attracted to the picture of this villain, who manipulated Othello into murdering his wife Desdemona.
How does one live with such a crime?
How does one live with any crime?
God forgives a penitent person but criminals still face real world justice.
Stay humble. Never forget who is hurting.
Ecclesiastes 7-2
It is better to go to the house of mourning
Than to go to the house of feasting,
For that is the end of all men;
And the living will take it to heart.
Sorrow is better than laughter,
For by a sad countenance the heart is made better.
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
But the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
All of this propels me to embrace life today with 100 percent commitment, whether I am in jail or in my home -- to advance ever so slowly to a higher plane of living, with a deeper understanding of the human heart; a life filled with compassion, beauty and art, a life better than the movies, better than my favorite books because it's real and it's mine.
