Dickie by Harmannus Sijbring

About "Dickie"

by Harmannus Sijbring

About the artwork

In 1995, I wrote a few poems. Circumstances of a personal nature gave me a temporary opportunity to think casually. To reshape my drastically changed life, I wrote down my thoughts in a notebook. The trigger? Heartbreak. The love of my life had other plans for her future. Now 30 years later, I found the notebook at the bottom of a drawer. One of the poems I wrote at the time reads:

"I want to drown in the eyes of a Portuguese,
if necessary in the slits of a Chinese one.
Too bad the reality is different,
they are the bulging eyes of my goldfish."

The poem is about continuing to search for love, sometimes settling for less, and finally facing the sobering reality:"Everything will be fine"

When I recently watched the series Ripley, shot entirely in stunning black-and-white, that feeling resurfaced. The series exudes a slow menace and a hypnotic beauty, perfectly captured in the Italy of the early 1960s. Marge, Dickie's girlfriend, writer and photographer, refuses to believe he has disappeared. I too believe: Dickie lives on, captured in my memories and images. In every shadow, every shoreline, every hushed stairstep, I can still see him.

Using this emotion as a starting point, I wrote a pictorial prompt inspired by Marge's thoughts. This picture is the result: a timeless portrait of Dickie, bathed in light and shadow, caught between longing and reality. Marge might have said: "My photos're not lying: Dickie is still there, somewhere, invisible to the world."

Created by Harmannus Sijbring with support from AI.