Devínsky hrad (Devin castle) - The Old World

Almost two months ago, I left Texas and moved to Prague with my love, Sashka. Two months ago…the time between then and now feels stretched and distorted, like I’m looking at the recent past in a funhouse mirror and saying ‘really? Only two months?’ My memory is tricked by the constant freshness of everything, as well as the seemingly never-ending list of to-do items, bureaucracy, castles and sunsets, not to mention changing professions and navigating the murky waters of living with a romantic partner for the first time.

Our perception of time (and in film or photography, the way creators can express the passage of time) won’t leave my thoughts. Ever since the first day I arrived in Europe, I’ve thought about time, and all of the other facets of life that get bundled up into that abstract, seemingly unquantifiable problem of our changing perception of time’s passage. How years can seem to disappear and two months can stretch to the horizon…

The first day in the “Old World," I awoke with Sashka and she took me on a drive through her city of Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. I was giddy. Even though the sky was nothing but shifting clouds and I was without one of my bags (lost in transit) there was a weightlessness in me.

Central Europe was as I expected it to be – overcast with a sharp wind, every wall, empty space, or surface tall enough to reach covered in colorful graffiti. 

We arrived at Devin Castle. The ruins sit upon a promontory that juts out into the confluence of the Danube and Morava rivers. I had a feeling from the moment I stepped out of the car, a combination of my mood, the weather, and extreme weight of time that hung over everything, that my pictures would end up being black and white.

I’ve never been the best with time or distance. I don’t know what that says about me or the way I think. Tell me that the castle area has been inhabited since Neolithic times, fortified since the Bronze age…I can’t fathom the space between when I stood there creating these photos, and the early peoples who struggled against the elements and each other atop that lonely, wind scoured hill. 

The Castle, once it became more than a church and small collection of dwellings, was built with defense in mind. From the highest remaining level of the ruins, you can see for miles into Austria and up and down the Danube. We stood and looked out over a vast land of rolling hills, sometimes dotted with groups of sheep. On the distant horizon was a line of wind turbines. Beneath the castle are the rivers meeting, churning into one another and throwing the brown riverbed up to the surface.

The history of the Castle Devin is convoluted. Possession of the hill and castle changed hands more times than I could keep track of, a retinue of unfamiliar royal names. One name that stuck out to me, Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1809, his forces shelled the castle, turning it into the ruin it is today.  

A piece of the Iron Curtain ran just outside the castle, along the muddy bank of the Danube. It was here that people were shot trying to cross the river under the veil of night. The tumultuous, violent history of Europe is all here at once, both modern and ancient, relevant and forgotten.

In the shadow of the castle, before one reaches the river, are two modern structures – a memorial to the victims of Communism, and an abandoned rectangular building. The building is overgrown and falling to pieces. The pieces that haven’t fallen are covered in graffiti. I don’t know the building’s purpose.

The abandoned building’s visual relation to the castle left me with a strange feeling. Each one of those structures was a testament to the ceaseless power of time. How important the people who ruled here thought they were…

I felt like I was standing on the cusp of some understanding.