the poetics of presentation

just a brief comment comparing two recent readings we’ve had — dorothea lange and pirkle jones’s “death of a valley” from 1960, and camilo josé vergara’s ongoing online photography exhibition, “invincible cities.” as we’re all working on compiling our essays, it’s useful to look at how the unspoken traits of presentation can have a profound poetic effect on one’s work.

consider lange’s photoessay. the storyline (of the life and death of berryessa valley, now lake berryessa in northern california) is clear and straightforward, a temporal portrait. the spotlights on individuals in the valley are particularly heartbreaking and humanizing; and yet there is an undercurrent foreshadowing of the coming destruction: i find it objectively in the graveyard shot, and subjectively in the celebration of the pastoral (as a counter to the imposing industry).

but the presentation itself is nuanced and worthy of note. the relatively haphazard placing of type-written text offering “voices” and quotations from offical documents towards the end of the article echoes the photograph of two forgotten portraits in an abandoned house; in the presentation of the article itself, there is the rustic and the streamlined texts — co-existing rather than fighting.

in vergara’s online presentation, old photographs and new exist on one page, as dots on the same map and as equal members in a sequence. the online page offers a timeless home for these items, recreating the mental map of memory and reinforcing the notion that cities can be a collection of times IN places, too — in his collection, always alive.

a dream, and some other thoughts

so last night i had a dream about creating a show based on my life. at the beginning of the dream it was a choice, either a work of art or some other physical creation; but by the end of the dream, it became a poorly-executed play, including a section of stand-up comedy (that wasn’t funny) and a lot of ad-libbing. between these two sections, i was traveling around semi-familiar places saddled with the heavy responsibility of coming up with a kind of autobiographical script. and i was failing, poorly. it got to the point where i was late to the “show,” without anything to show, and it was scary and embarrassing. so it goes.

i realized today that this was most likely inspired by this project, and in particular coming up with a storyboard for the final essay. my site (Lincoln, Massachusetts), of course, is a former home; and it’s very difficult to divorce (if even necessary) my autobiographical feelings from my creative output and narrative. it’s a complicated and nuanced relationship.

a helpful quotation from the aperture interview with New York Times front page picture editor, Philip Gefter:

Finding the right words to talk about images is something I have spent a lot of time working on.It takes focus and discipline…I try my best to introduce the pictures with as much accuracy of detail, efficiency, and relevance as possible.

So far, in conversations with peers and otherwise, I’ve compared the process of selecting and editing photographs to editing poetry: in both processes one refines their creative output, trying to find the best evocation of a feeling. i have yet to assign words to my photographs, however. this will be a difficult task, as i’ve tried to let the photographs speak for themselves — act as canvasses on which others can assign meaning. ultimately, i’m wary of picking the wrong words for these images; and telling a story that isn’t mine.

Regarding the discussion of Berlin in Chapter 9 (240-244): I visited the city in 2006, and it was one of the best trips of my life. I felt an immediate connection to the German landscape, as if I were somehow “coming home.” I found that while the most heavily-trafficked and central (former) East Berlin areas (including Pariser Platz at the base of the Brandenburg Gate) are now intentionally devoid of past remnants, and are somewhat barren, perhaps the past is within the present IN ABSENTIA. that’s to say that the lack of place is a construction: it’s both a deliberate attempt to deny the landscape of recognizable past symbols of oppression and contention, and impose a new landscape of apoliticism; as if there were less on which to attach one’s nationalistic fervor. areas such as Potsdamer Platz with all their “Western” skyscrapers and developments have gone from physically barren to psychologically barren; as if contemporary cosmopolitanism were strictly commercial.

here are a few pictures from my visit, just to satiate the eager.

past as prop

reichstag & steps

Friedrichstraße collage

how to be thoughtful, though young

So far I’ve amassed a significant number of photographs of Lincoln over multiple visits in dying summer and golden fall — approximately six hundred. A lot are repeats, different angles, framings, interpretations of details and interesting juxtapositions. There are many of the “GYM” supergraphic, for example, because I wanted to capture the reflection in the doorway glass just right (or close to it). There are many of two graveyards (none of which made it into the three prior essays) in the golden light of dusk and the fading brilliance of late afternoon, where I tried to capture age-old themes of rebirth, endings; and, above all, (artistically?) reconciling the Lincoln of my childhood, the one without death and limits, with the adult grappling with death and its certainty. In the last few visits, I’ve tried to capture the places of my memories; my effort so far has been to collect a semi-permanent database of them, at least in the context of how I think of them now. 

Next steps: catalog Concord, West Concord, and Weston (more the houses, these). 

This latest set (Poetics) came from a visit two weekends ago, a chilly day; but some of the images (the church and fire box, for example) were re-shot after inspiration from the very first visit. I’ve tried to unite the first two sets with this one — approaching thoughtful reverence with a playful eye. We’ll see how it works – 

The picture that didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped was of a clear anachronism: the glossy red antique car with hours-old orange rinds on the foot-step and an Obama sticker on the wide back. people walking by: “only in Lincoln… or Concord.” 

regarding the poetics of landscape

memento from a recent trip

As someone who enjoys exploring the deeper relationships between things, at least as humans can interpret them through anthropomorphic analogy, the passage about Jefferson’s University of Virginia struck me in particular. “The contrast of the trees’ branching, fractal form to the crisply Euclidean geometry of the architecture initiates a dialogue,” Spirn writes. “In the early morning, in late afternoon, low light casts shadows of branches against the smooth round white columns — a dialogue between organic and inorganic, romantic and classical, metaphor and source” (216). This passage puts well into words the fleeting thoughts of place interpretation; and the word choice — scattered but cohesive, too — reflects the nature of the thought process. I appreciate this, and find inspiration in it. In Lincoln, I have a multitude of narratives going on, bouncing around in my head. Sometimes I think it would be easier if I did not share them all; I’m somehow afraid that exposing them all would take too much time and that the elucidation of the nuance would somehow kill it all… 

I find myself falling back on tense dualisms from time to time. There are reasons for this, repeated patterns in experience translated into psychological expectations, et cetera. Certainly this isn’t a therapy session, but this personal trope manifests itself in a lot of things I do and the way I initially think about situations (then, later, like now, I come back and try to knit the divides). For this class, and for the last assignment, I firmly decided to go back to Lincoln as a child, and look for playful relationships within the familiar landscapes of my memories. But the area around the school, which symbolized childhood and was a summertime fixture of my youth (summer camp, the pool, the playground), was deserted on weekends this fall — and while somewhat reminiscent of the times I’d remembered, was nevertheless bleak and empty. The supergraphics that had surely piqued my interest at the time are indeed hard to reconcile with the landscape, especially devoid of the element which is the reason for their existence — the people! For people are necessary to understand the meaning of the words, and without them, the photograph of the gym sign seems a wee bit impersonal. So, why not combine the playful with the reverent? It’s a delicate balance, but not impossible. And I think that the inherent playfulness in finding the linguistic relationships within the landscape is a fitting model: it approaches the landscape with a mature respect and a childlike curiosity. That is a tension that is gratifying to manage. 

RE: Soundscapes (221). According to Spirn’s assessment of R. Murray Schafer, a “soundscape” is “the characteristic sound, frequency, and rhythms of a place, alliteration, echoism, assonance.” She continues, recalling that since an introduction to these ‘scapes in Paris, she “is more aware how sound shapes context, and sounds become less ephemeral, more easily recalled” (221). One of my informal “prerequisites” for this class was an interest and passion for infusing places with music, and what effect that has on the moment. In conversations with Jase Wilson, I likened the effect to that of synesthesia, where the senses interchange (words as colors, e.g.). The difference with Schafer’s “soundscape” is that my connections are personal, and I don’t know how to share them with others — the key is intuitive. On a train ride in England, where the sun shone over the passing Fens with a bright fog, I handed my headphones to one of my closest friends there, Jeremy, with the hopes that he’d find the music (Brian Eno’s Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror) a pleasing and meaningful addition to the landscape. My heart exploded when his face changed, and he looked out into the blended greens and pastel golds of dusk — he saw it too. Since then, we’ve shared rides around Walla Walla wheatfields with Sigur Ros (an Icelandic band that embodies their land’s bleak beauty) playing on the stereo, experiencing a shared soundscape. Just thinking about it makes me feel warm and dusk, too — it is one of life’s simplest pleasures, to share (in) beauty with others. 

The only thing I can do for the purposes of this entry, for I want to try at least, is to provide a few images & and the music I associate with them. Perhaps you can find your own connections and inspiration — I find immense satisfaction in deepening the experience of landscape. 

(for below, click on the “play” button in the new window)

Kid for Today , Over the Horizon Radar

 

Whitby

 

Lake District

Ely

One last thought about Lincoln. If this story is mine, where am I? Am I a ghost of my memories? Or is my shadow indelibly marked on the landscape? I think that it is the latter, but only when the light is right.  

autobiography

notes from overground

the extensive wood playground — strat’s place, built in the early 1990s and named for the deceased father of someone in the town — is surrounded by orange trees now, blanketed in leaves and populated only by a red bucket here, a blue plastic shovel there. school is out on sundays, of course; but the area was closed off by shiny tape holding the swinging gates shut. 

as i walked around the primary school ‘pods,’ single-floor barracks of classrooms with darkened windows, one glass frame holding a box with “we love scholastic books” on the inside sill, the air was thick with a heavy scent — paint, maybe stain. indeed: the playground structures were dripping with what appeared to be a viscous wet, in some instances as minute drops hanging suspended like stalactites from the wood. also, the smell was delightful in a surrendering sort of way. 

the photographs i’ve taken to fulfill the second assignment re: significant detail seek a wider dialogue on the nature of nuance and detail — that is, given the range of scale we encounter in our experiences and the (collective) sense we make of them, “details” can range from the very small (as parts of a system, or particular activity/place) to the mid-size, to the moderately large (as a specific building among a collection of buildings, or a homeowner’s outspoken expression within a larger place/town); etc. 

i deliberately wanted to have more “fun” in these photographs. i realized over the past few weeks that going home again (and again, and again) needn’t be somber to be reflective. there is joy in returning to a once-familiar place to explore newness and overlooked places (as there is a certain joy contentment in melancholy, too). there’s more color in these places; and yet some familiar tropes, i think. questions for the near future: how do words and symbols add meaning to places? can the mere idea of a physical symbol/word resonate more strongly than what the symbol represents? 

that is all for now. again, it is late. 

blurb

i returned to lincoln today, again, when the weather was melancholy in that faded-yellow-picture type of way. it is interesting that at the moment i pine for the sunlight and shadows that have just recently passed into memory, instead of anticipating their reawakening tomorrow. 

it is late. 

the beginning

good evening, readers. this is my new journal/web-log, commenced in concert with a landscape photography class at MIT. 

stay tuned for journal entries related to memories, childhood, living the examined life, and the photography of places.