What I Drank Today

Round 5
Image 3 - "Drinkable Daydreams" : 3.25
The cup holds the same lake the window holds, and that is a lovely thought the picture then buries - meaning the one real idea here, that a drink can contain the view you are drinking it in front of, has to fight its way past lemon, mint, loose leaf, a book, a saucer of tea and a sailboat made of steam before it reaches you. Then the theme is written out on a note in the corner with a smiley face, which tells us what we are looking at instead of trusting us to see it; strip the props and the caption, keep the cup and the window, and the conceit lands.

Image 1 - "The Spring of Life" : 3.45
This is the only picture in the round where somebody actually drinks, and the body sells it - hands cupped and dripping, the face pushed down into the water, the shoulders braced on wet stone, so you feel the cold before you have thought about it. What keeps it from more is that it stops at the postcard of thirst: every frond and every shaft of sun sits where an adventure brochure would put it, and the hidden face spares the picture the harder job of showing us what the water does to him.

Image 4 - "Nothing Left to Prove" : 3.65
The title is the best writing in the round and it reaches back into the image to change it - a man, a glass, a hill going gold, and that phrase turns scenery into a verdict on a whole life. The picture is less brave than its name: the olives, the bread, the bottle turned label-out and the wistful gaze into the valley are the furniture of every wine advertisement ever shot, and the one thing worth keeping, that weathered and genuinely particular face, gets pushed to the edge while the vista takes the middle.

Image 2 - "The Elixir of Health" : 3.80
Everyone else painted a drink; this one painted the swallowing of it, and the round turns on that difference. The boy's face is the whole picture - down-turned mouth, wet eyes, blanket hauled up like armour against one small glass of something dark - and it is funny and sad in the same second, which is much harder than being pretty. The title finishes the job, because calling that vile cupful an elixir is exactly the lie adults tell and children have never once believed, and the mother's steady unmoved hand says she has told it before. It is the least polished image here and the mother reads a little blank, but it is the only one with a story instead of a setting. My winner.