Tag: large format

In The Garden – Olive II

Olive II. Paros, Greece. 2010.

Olive II. Paros, Greece. 2010.
Scan from 8×10 negative.

I am playing catch-up with Mike Chisholm’s wonderful blog and work. Having just read his playful, but I think earnest, suggestion for a different kind of PhD based on the following Ruskin quote, I’m tempted to design a photo course around poetry, prophecy and religion (although could  the last topic be supplanted with ‘reciprocity’? <chuckle>):

[ the following from blog Idiotic Hat : All in One ]

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way.  Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see.  To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion — all in one.

John Ruskin, Modern Painters (1856)

Well, maybe.  I like the sound of that, though I expect David Beckham has something similar to say about kicking a football.  It sort of makes a camera sound like a short-cut to enlightenment — nothing “sees” more clearly than a camera — but recording and seeing are not the same thing.  And cameras (if they have souls, which I’m pretty sure they do) have camera souls, not human ones.

There is an interdisciplinary degree known as “PPE” (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) which is offered at Oxford and some other universities.  What a shame you can’t also study PPR, i.e. Ruskin’s “all in one”, Poetry, Prophecy and Religion.  Now that would be worth three years of anybody’s time.

Pope Francis I

Bowl in St. Francis' Chamber, Le Celle, Dortona, Italy. Marrch,

Bowl in St. Francis’ Chamber, Le Celle, Dortona, Italy. Marrch, 2010.

The Catholic church has a new Pope. It seems germane to post this image, made in a stone-hewn chamber in which St. Francis of Assisi is said to have spent many hours in seclusion and meditation. I am not the praying kind, but, Pope Francis I, because you walk into a challenging job, and for the sake of many millions who look to your leadership, and for the potential your office has to alleviate poverty and call on national leaders to greater selflessness, I wish you all the best and hope humility and kindness guide your actions.

This photograph may be unrelated to the Pope’s calling. However, I wonder about that as I consider why the image seems so strange to me — it came from nowhere except the place. I almost do not recall making the photograph, except for thinking if the exposure had been adjusted enough for bellows factor and reciprocity failure. Formally, it is extremely subtle and almost not there. Photographically, it is almost abstract and difficult to understand as an image of something. The light seems artificial but was not; it too was hardly there. It is humble, and unassuming; almost a throw-away. The line, if I may call it that, of focus drills its way across and through the stone wall. The bowl supports and contains darkness. I keep thinking of the labyrinthine machinations of the papacy. Or of the spiritual quest. Beware the desert.

In The Garden – Olive. VI.

Olive. VI. Paros, Greece. 2010

Olive. VI. Paros, Greece. 2010
Scan from 8×10 negative

Where is the opening, the closing, the beginning, the end
Why the edge, the wedge
or age?
What of the form between form, the shape of shape
of youmeyoumeyou, just blending?

In The Garden – Suns

suns

Suns. (fresco and La Nativita by Raffaello Vanni.)
Chiesa di San Francesco, Cortona, Italy. March 2010.
8×10 film, processed in pyro.

The series, ‘In The Garden’, began while I was in Cortona, in 2010. I knew then that the work had something to do with the singular sense of relief that comes from compression and constriction. The Exodus story, and Moses’ too, tends to be considered most in this way. But I was also thinking a lot about the responsibilities of citizenship, and the gardener as both guide and maker. Back then, I simply called this new and growing body of work ‘Exodus’. It was too simple.

Now, three years on, the work made around December of 2012 began to both clarify and deepen my understanding of these issues, and I returned to the (perhaps more) ancient stories and cosmologies of the creator/destroyer gods in the Vedic and Hindu pantheon: Shiva and Vishnu in particular. So, this work now sits a bit more comfortably in my head. In the Garden. And I am still thinking of Stanley Kunitz’ work.

3 Portraits of 3 Men

 

Rick Johnson, Cortona, Italy, 2010

James Goedert, New Orleans, 2010

Robin Gillanders, Sewanee, 1994

Here are three men, letting their space become mine, and yours. The photographs were made over a span of some 20 years with a large format camera. I am becoming increasingly puzzled and intrigued by the idea of connectivity, or rather, the vaporizing of the individual. This puzzlement makes sense against the backdrop of certain ideas like Emergence theory and Thomas Lovejoy’s ideas about Gaia. The psychologist G. H. Lewis is credited for having coined the term ‘emergence’ and clearly describes what I think of when I make my best portraits [caveat - I am no scholar, and have learned about the origins of "emergence" from this entry in wikipedia!] (my bolding below):

Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the co-operant forces; their sum, when their directions are the same — their difference, when their directions are contrary.Further, every resultant is clearly traceable in its components, because these are homogeneous and commensurable. It is otherwise with emergents, when, instead of adding measurable motion to measurable motion, or things of one kind to other individuals of their kind, there is a co-operation of things of unlike kinds. The emergent is unlike its components insofar as these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to their sum or their difference. (Lewes 1875, p. 412) (Blitz 1992)

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