Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, 2024

I sometimes have a Robinson Crusoe fantasy, for the solitude, not the hardships. I did say it was a fantasy. On many occasions I have claimed that, except for Barbara being in my life, I would be fine as a hermit, living in a cave. Of course there has to be a fast internet connection. And the truth is, I’d probably be bored stiff within a few days.

This photograph is a variation on tropical tourism cliches, with the compositional tactic of the C curve of the shoreline, sinuously, continuously looping the viewers’ eye, seducing the weekday, workday, everyday drudgery, suggesting that here would be a so much better place to be–calm, peaceful, quiet, alone. Of course the economics and logistics of getting to a place like this almost certainly means you will not be alone.

Reading some science fiction on a recent trip, a phrase jumped out at me, “…arranged to suggest geometries of endless longing.” (“Count Zero” by William Gibson) Sounds like the goal of advertising photography.

During the raging hormones’ stage of my adolescence I saw a movie, “Bird of Paradise” with Louis Jordan and Debra Paget. A young Frenchman goes home with a college friend, to the South Pacific, meets, falls in love with, and marries his friend’s sister, also the Chief’s daughter, the lovely Kalua. SPOILER ALERT! It does not end well. She is barren, and the island volcano is acting up, so she has to self-sacrifice by jumping into the volcano, to save her people.

And then there was the tragedy of the paradise Bali Hai, and beautiful Liat, daughter of Bloody Mary, in “South Pacific.” Apparently 1950’s Hollywood had, hypocritically I suspect, a problem with interracial affairs. Like the song said, “You have to be taught.”

Leaving all rationality aside, those films set the scene for another fantasy, coming down a white sandy beach, alone, toward me, a beautiful skinny girl with artificially darkened skin pretending to be Polynesian.

How dull might life be without imagination?

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index