“Sometimes it is impossible to say why and how a work of art achieves its effect. I can stand in front of a painting and become filled with emotions and thoughts, evidently transmitted by the painting, and yet is impossible to trace those emotions and thoughts back to it and say, for example, that the sorrow came from the colours, or that the longing came from the brushstrokes, or that the sudden insight that life will end lay in the motif.”

Karl Ove Knausgaard, from his book So Much Longing In So Little Space — The Art Of Edvard Munch

Once in a while the configuration of an image digs under your skin. It is impossible to expain the reason why in most cases, as Mr. Knausgaard so well articulates. This photograph suggests an ending to me, a final accounting of missed chances — maybe the wasting away of my own life, the wreck of a relationship, the demise of a thing of immense value. The curve of steps leading up the incline, then disappearing, could be the wistful detail that pierces me — releasing the nostalgic emotion — which is intense and most akin to homesickness.