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![George Bedell’s Heat and Silence Series. Fine art photograph of room with bare window and Japanese koi kite.]()
Hope. St. Paul, MN. 1974.
A Japanese kite, anchored to a wall, eyes the cold, clear sky above Minnesota. Perhaps the paper carp longs to join a school of other Koi in more favorable spring winds above Japan on Kodomo-no-hi, a children’s’ festival of hope.
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![George Bedell’s Heat and Silence Series. Fine art photograph of sinister institutional basement in honor of G. B. Piranesi.]()
For G. B. Piranesi. St. Paul, MN. 1974
The 18th century artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi is famed for his etchings of imaginary prison interiors. The horror of such places was achieved not by portraying broken bodies or writhing flesh, but by the empty spaces in which torture took place. Whereas Piranesi gave vast, cavernous spaces a claustrophobic character, this image’s focus is on a small area comprised of minimal components.
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![George Bedell’s Heat and Silence Series. Fine art photograph of lady’s bedroom with empty bed.]()
Awaiting Connubial Bliss. St. Paul MN. 1974
This bedroom seems too sparse, too perfect, and too well thought out, however inviting might be the warm double bed. -
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Blinded on Crocus Hill. St. Paul, MN. 1974
Why were the blinds drawn on this second story veranda? It was not a bright day. Perhaps it was to block the view of dilapidated roofs and stark power lines in what in the early 1970s was a decaying prestige neighborhood awaiting gentrification.
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Dawn Points. Key West, FL. 1976.
A night’s furies spent, early morning breaks in Key West, a few years before the island became upscale. The early sunshine softly filtered through jalousie windows plays over a bedroom’s walls and sheets. A spectral electric fan is aimed toward an unmade bed.
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![George Bedell’s Heat and Silence Series. Fine art photograph of interior with large window and massive door in an insurance building in St. Paul, MN.]()
Mutual Service. St. Paul. 1973
In the 1950s, Prudential Insurance did architecture a great service by introducing a building style that was copied by numerous financial institutions. Like the fifties in America, the style was big, bold, with a geometric sense passed down from European refugee practitioners of the International Style. When this picture was taken, the style was dated, and many institutions were shedding their old digs. Yet, these old insurance buildings, despite their bulky solidity, have a sense of proportion and subtle grace that just might be timeless.
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Marilynn’s Passage. St. Paul, MN. 1976 In an empty hallway of a renovated condominium in a building approaching its centenary, one half expects to see the scant shade of a lady drifting through the passageway. The wraith pays no heed to the photographer about to trip the shutter. -
![George Bedell’s Heat and Silence Series. Fine art photograph of doorways in empty room in St. Paul’s Crocus Hill Area.]()
No Exit I. Crocus Hill, St. Paul, MN. 1974
No Exit I and II both work as a diptych and single pictures. The images are of interiors of doorways, each a mark of transition and transcendence. Empty interior spaces are like portraits. One learns as much about a person by looking at his or her environs as by looking into that person’s face. These pictures were taken at a renovated condominium briefly lived in by a lovely, beautiful, effervescent, twice-divorced heiress.
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![George Bedell’s Heat and Silence Series. Fine art photograph of empty interior with mirrors reflecting doorways in St. Paul, MN. 1974.]()
No Exit II. Crocus Hill, St. Paul, MN. 1974.
No Exit I and II both work as a diptych and single pictures. The images are of interiors with doorways and mirrors, each a mark of transition and transcendence. One learns as much about people by looking at their environs as by looking into their faces. A few months after No Exit I & II were taken, the condo’s owner suddenly married a third husband and moved to a place called Last Chance Gulch in one of those dry southwestern states.
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![George Bedell’s Heat and Silence Series. Fine art photograph of daybreak cast on a bare wall and drawn window in a home in Key West. 1976.]()
Daybreak, Key West. Key West, FL. 1976
The early sunshine, resonating light from the Pacific and Gulf, tear sleep apart in a blaze of heat and brilliance. Still, despite the abrupt disruption of slumber, awaking to the tranquility of a bright, new day, perfect weather, and briny wafts of sea air make it all worthwhile.
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![George Bedell’s Heat and Silence Series. Fine art photograph of potted succulent on a widow ledge during winter in St. Paul, MN. 1974.]()
The Winter Sun Is Like a Stepmother’s Love. St. Paul, MN. 1974
Towards the year's end, on the sill of a frosted window, a desert succulent, the sturdiest of plants, stretches toward the light of a distant winter sun. -
![George Bedell’s Heat and Silence Series. Fine art photograph of office building interior with hat rack and full-length window shrouded with diaphanous curtains during a blizzard alert in St. Paul, MN. 1975.]()
Storm Alert. Minneapolis. 1975
Late one morning in January, an office entrance hall stood empty with a bare hat rack and drawn curtains. What can be seen outside on University Avenue seems bright and balmy, but a blizzard is forecasted for the afternoon—one of the worst in the region’s history.
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Heat and Silence
“Dawn Points and another day prepares itself for heat and silence.”—T. S. Eliot, East Coker I, Four Quartets.
These images of vacant interiors were motivated by the belief that enclosed spaces can hold a semblance of those whom live or work within them. Although taken at the same time as the Hungry Winter series, these pictures are more personal than the outdoor, public spaces of that series.
Some with a metaphysical bent claim that all matter is made up of varying waves that only appear solid when we look at them, as quantum mechanics suggests. All is energy. They further claim that through emotions, thoughts, and actions people impart traces of their energy in the places in which they once dwelt. I do not know, but rather doubt this claim. Still, I find it comforting to think that something of us survives in our absence, even if just half-spent energy.
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