This photograph, taken on the Mediterranean Island of Filicudi, makes for awe—that the world could be like that, and a photographer could capture that moment when a huge sword of lightning shot down from the clouds into the calm, dark water below.
Those magnificent clouds, with their dark and light purple, are wild, threatening; yet—with their upward-lifting, rounded shapes, and strange, rising lavender glow—beautiful.
I was moved to see that with this mighty elemental upheaval is the delicate silhouette of a villa and trees on the hill to the left, and on the right, a thin horizontal strip of light revealing a town along the shore—each so different, yet in relation to the wild electrical storm.
“The purpose of a photograph,” Eli Siegel said in a class, “is to take the world with courage and still show that there is sense in it.” Rinversi does that here, showing that quietude and turbulence, what’s lovely and what’s fearsome can have a true composition.
—Carrie Wilson