Kirke took this picture of Hanna and me in front of the Savior on the Spilled Blood Church in Saint Petersburg – but it wasn’t until I got home and started going through the travel photos that I realized that it’s almost an identical staging of a photo that my dad took of Hanna and me in front of the Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice when we were there in 2003. Look at it. Without planning to, we’re standing in the same way, even wearing the same colors.
And I don’t know, maybe age has made me sentimental, but this pair of photographs makes me feel like I’m looking at something almost holy. Many things have changed during the twelve years that passed between when those two photos were taken. We’re both completely different persons, multiple times heavier with experiences and memories. But also, the similarity of them, that we’re standing there, with the colors and the postures, in front of these two world-famous churches. And most of all, that we’re standing there. That we’re still traveling together.
It makes me feel, despite all the change, like there is also continuity in life. The important things stay the same. Evolve, maybe, but at the core, the same. I still like blue. I still like traveling. And I still like doing it with Hanna.
Katja Malmborg 