Poolside Stillness

Poolside Stillness — black-and-white photograph, a farmhouse courtyard in Malta. White frame, wide mat. The bedroom, above the armchair. Photographer and year to be confirmed.

A woman reclining in a pool at a Maltese farmhouse, half submerged, eyes closed. Black and white.

It was shot in a courtyard, which is why the light behaves the way it does — bounced off limestone rather than falling straight down, so the contrast stays soft even at what is obviously the middle of the day.

The corner it hangs in

It hangs above the armchair in the corner of the bedroom, in a white frame with a wide mat. The white was chosen against every other frame in the building, which are dark and deep. This one is meant to disappear and let the picture sit in the wall like a window rather than on it like an object.

That corner has no screen within reach. There is a chair, a lamp and this photograph, and that is the whole specification. Guests use it for reading, mostly. One told us she did her stretches there every morning for six weeks and never once turned the television on, which we took as the highest possible review of a corner.

It is the quietest picture in the collection. The Fillmore poster in the living area is loud, the Sgt. Pepper’s gatefold is louder, and Pink Floyd’s prism above the bed is doing something cerebral. This one is a woman floating in a pool in Malta on a hot afternoon, which after three weeks of working here turns out to be the picture people mention.