Anatomy of a Photo

I recently posted this picture on my Instagram feed.

I captioned the photo ‘Easter’. I have been walking past this pile of bedclothes in an underpass near where I live for some time. I have never seen the person I presume once slept in it.

There are a number of factors that made me think of Easter. Clearly the person has risen from this makeshift bed. The situation (see photos below) is a subway so underground. The discarded fragment of an old pallet has the appearance of an abandoned cross. The echos of Jesus reverberate further when you consider how he aligned himself with the poor and the marginalised, the homeless.

I doubt this is the second coming but it is, nonetheless, I think, a powerful image.