Pierre Gonnord - One Chair Over

Nursing his 3rd vodka soda with a splash of cranberry, a guess on my part, the gentleman next to Mel graciously moved over a chair. In 20 years of marriage, Mel & I decided sometime ago we much prefer the bar to isolated tables and chairs when dining out. An opportunity to engage in social roulette, the evening’s gamble presented us with a man in his 70’s searching for something. In our short time together we learned not of his name, but an explanation for a noticeable pain in his gaze. A pain I only recognize after 40+ years with a father who like our bar buddy served in the Vietnam war. My husband, also a veteran, missed the call into action during the Gulf War. I observed the two talking. Our friend leaning closer in an effort to hear better, another familiar trait to that of my father. Both served, but our new friend wore the gravity of his circumstance like the tanks he drove across the jungle. Slow, heavy, strong but still somehow so vulnerable, reminding me of Pierre Gonnord’s portraits. Able to see honesty in everything about him, I felt as though I knew this man in a 5 minute conversation, but only as I knew my father. Mirror images of each other and having never met, I felt great affection for this troubled man. A power embodied in Gonnord’s work brings me to a state of empathy for people unknown to me and that society ignores. This discovery surprises me, to feel so much for a stranger, to see something so familiar in another. Could his lens capture the grace in this man’s regret so that others too may find it familiar thus creating a powerful tool for the lost veterans who live out in the open amongst us, one chair over.

Miroslaw, Pierre Gonnord