“that meagre and fragile thread… by which the little surface corners and edges of men’s secret and solitary lives may be joined for an instant now and then before sinking back into the darkness where the spirit cried for the first time and was not heard and will cry for the last time and will not be heard then either”
-from Absolom, Absolom! by William Faulkner.
photo: Flowers from the Fall, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
photo: Flowers from the Fall, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
photo: Flowers from the Fall, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
“his very body was an empty hall echoing with sonorous defeated names; he was not a being, an entity, he was a commonwealth. He was a barracks filled with stubborn, back-looking ghosts…”
-from Absolom, Absolom! by William Faulkner.
photo: Flowers from the Fall, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
photo: Flowers from the Fall, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
photo: Flowers from the Fall, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales, we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature, in which men and women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection which sound to us like Sanskrit or Chocktaw; we see dimly people, the people in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting, in this shadowy attenuation of time possessing now heroic proportions, performing their acts of simple passion and simple violence, impervious to time and inexplicable
-from Absolom, Absolom! by William Faulkner.
photo: Flowers from the Fall, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
photo: Flowers from the Fall, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
photo: Flowers from the Fall, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
The portraits by Lucia Moholy were the one thing at the MOMA Bauhaus exhibit that stopped me dead in my tracks:
photo: Franz Roh, 1926, by Lucia Moholy
And then this is a portrait of Lucia by her husband and photographer, László Moholy-Nagy. Both of these pictures are really something else.
photo: portrait of Lucia Moholy by László Moholy-Nagy
At nearly the same time as the Moholys, the painter Balthus was in Paris reaching a stride that would define his work as controversial, erotic, and, I think, brilliant. It’s great to read his biography revolving around his early years in Paris and the circles he ran in, including, Giacometti, Many Ray, Camus, Miró, Picasso, Lacan. The heavy hitters of culture, those that shaped our modern and even our post-modern sensibilities. Which brings me to a discussion I was having last night w/ a friend in regards to movements in the arts and culture, those little sparks that ignite and burn and sometimes manage to change everything thereafter. Namely we talked about how they’ve always been geographically based and how the internet has changed that old need to actually be somewhere and in a physically community to participate (Post-war Paris, NYC in the 50s and 80s, as two modern Western examples). Does physical dissipation lead to cultural dissipation? I think so. Does that kind of ruin, or at least make much more difficult, the chances for those paradigm shifts of culture, the arts, and how people think? Maybe. Sure, it’s an over simplified view, b/c I really don’t know what I’m talking about, but I figure it’s something to roll around in your head while we have this discussion. (Over our computers…oh, the irony).
painting: by Balthus
Anyway, there’s an excellent portrait of Balthus by Irving Penn, w/ Balthus in a chair wearing a robe and a belt made of simple rope, with that infinite air of human-ess reaching into eternity that Penn instilled in so many of his sitters. I’d seen it in one of Penn’s books, and thought it’d go nicely here, but can’t find it online anywhere, so I guess for now the internet does have it’s limits.
Painter’s and photographer’s makes me think of George Bernard Shaw’s quote that if Velazquez was alive today he’d be a photographer. I mean, could you imagine! Conde Naste contract. B/c the guy sorta was doing what Leibovitz does, except he did it over 300 years ago w/ a paint brush
painting: Las Meninas, 1665, by Diego Velazquez
Shaw, now there is a mind! The guy must have been a photographers dream: self aware, smart, and, the icing, the cliche look of a wise man. I mean, he was someone who believed death was only real b/c it was an idea put in our head, an idea that one really didn’t have to abide by. Faaarrrrr out. I guess he took the Nietzschian ubermensch literally. If you want to get to know him, his plays Major Barbara and Man and Superman would be the two I’d suggest as seminal.
photo: George Bernard Shaw, ©The Estate of Yousuf Karsh
The threads holding this post together were thin to begin with, and they’ve completely disintegrated by this point. So I’ll spare you any more of what was on my mind and will instead bid you adieu.
Facing the Music
by Paul AusterBlue. And within that blue a feeling
of green, the gray blocks of clouds
buttressed against air, as if
in the idea of rain
the eye
could master the speech
of any given momenton earth. Call it the sky. And so
to describe
whatever it is
we seem, as if it is nothing
but the idea
of something we had lost
within. for we can begin
to rememberthe hard earth, the flint
reflecting stars, the undulating
oaks set loose
by the heaving of air, and so down
to the least seed, revealing what grows
above us, as if
because of this blue there could be
this greenthat spreads, myriad
and miraculous
in this, the most silent
moment of summer. Seeds
speak of this juncture, define
where the air and the earth erupt
in this profusion of chance, the random
forces of our own lack
of knowing what it is
we see, and merely to speak of it
is to see
how words fail us, how nothing comes right
in the saying of it, not even these words
I am moved to speak
in the name of this blue
and green
that vanish into the air
of summer.Impossible
to hear it anymore. The tongue
is forever taking us away
from where we are, and nowhere
can we be at rest
in the things we are given
to see, for each word
is an elsewhere, a thing that moves
more quickly than the eye, even
as this sparrow moves, veering
into the air
in which it has no home. I believe, then,
in nothingthese words might give you, and still
I can feel them
speaking through me, as if
this alone
is what I desire, this blue
and this green, and to say
how this blue
has become for me the essence
of this green, and more than the pure
seeing of it, I want you to feel
this word
that has lived inside me
all day long, this
desire for nothingbut the day itself, and how it has grown
inside my eyes, stronger
than the word it is made of, as if
there could ever be another wordthat would hold me
without breaking.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
‘I always wanted you to admire my fasting,’ the hunger-artist said. ‘And so we do,’ the foreman said obligingly. ‘But you shouldn’t admire it,’ the hunger-artist said. ‘Well, all right, we don’t,’ said the foreman, “but why shouldn’t we?” ‘Because I have to fast, I can’t help it,’ the hunger-artist said. ‘Well, I’m blowed,’ said the foreman, ‘and why can’t you help it?’ ‘Because,’ the hunger-artist began, lifting his head a little and, with lips pursed as if for a kiss, speaking right into the foreman’s ear lest anything be lost, ‘because I’ve never been able to find the kind of nourishment I like. If I had found it, believe you me, I’d not have made this fuss but would have eaten my fill the same as you and everyone else.’ Those were his last words, but his shattered gaze retained the firm if no longer proud conviction that he was fasting yet.
from Franz Kafka’s short story, The Hunger Artist.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell
The author, Haven Kimmel had written this poem during the first chapter of a sprawling and inspiring email conversation I had and remain to have w/ her. Last week for some reason I was possessed by the notion of hearing her read it, for my own pleasure, but also with it in mind to put up here, so I wrote and asked her to record and send. And she obliged!
So, lay back and close your eyes, b/c I doubt you’re going to find this anyplace else.
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“The Holy Dove Was Moving Too,” written and read by Haven Kimmel.
Haven has a number of bestsellers riddling the shelf. Go and seek out.
[Change of topic]
Note: my posting here has been pretty thin lately. I’ve been busy. I’ve been busy working on things I’m not in a hurry to go on about here. It’s not my intention to talk work work on this site, at least not in depth. Yes, I’ll drop a post updating the occasional happenings, but only so things don’t wilt here. I suspect these are the thinnest posts. You see, the original purpose of this site was to share the NYC Journal and other work I do that would be otherwise homeless, and also to talk about photography in the most whimsical sense of an art and of what lights the fires in my head and heart. I have no interest in using this site as a marketing tool. Why am I bringing this up? B/c I’ve realized, as I’ve become busier, how the original intent of this blog was very time intensive. The NYC Journal alone is something that I used to spend days on a week, while right now it’s lucky to get a handful of hours in the week. But I’m not complaining, only letting you know I’m learning and making adjustments to keep things going here. Note concluded.
On that note,,,
[Change of topic yet again]
a few random pics:
photo: London, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
photo: London, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
photo: London, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
photo: London, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
photo: London, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
photo: London, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
photo: London, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
photo: London, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.
Got to shoot in St. Barts for 5 day, a friend’s wedding. Amazing time.
Also read Beckett and chain smoked on the beach. No, not Camus, but still…
yay
Then to London for some of their fashion week parties, meetings with mags. Tried to spend time on the street shooting, but the streets of that city: stoic (read, snore), so I began to wonder if there ever was a seminal London street photographer? Other than the bit of work Robert Frank did (in Wales?), but I couldn’t think of anyone…? Anyone?
photo: from the book Robert Frank: London/Wales, © Robert Frank.
Then home, I hit Penn station out of Newark on Monday eve rush hour and the train station was like firecrackers going off everyplace, felt remarkable to be back in the crazy. Never satiated with that, never ever. Gluttonous for the madness.
IN THE STATION METRO
By Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
(That’s a well known imagest poem that was part of a one of the more short lived art movements dubbed, Vorticism, which also had it proponents in photography. The photography bit. though ambitious in theory, was to not such great effect I think. The best part was what it was called, Vortography, which would not be, I imagine, an easy moniker to live up to…yeah, in retrospect, the name may have been the origin of the movements failing.
photo: Vortograph by Alvin Langdon Coburn
).
Update, I just confirmed a job on the W. Coast for next week, fly out today, so I’ll be gone again for a week…maybe two. The blog goes neglected again. Golly.
I guess in the meantime, cruise to the newsstands and take a look at Katie Grand’s (formerly the force behind POP) new mag, LOVE. Maybe not amazing yet, but most certainly promising.
photo: cover of first issue of LOVE magazine, Beth Ditto, photo by Mert and Marcus.
That or – going back to Beckett – read his trilogy if you haven’t. I’d tried twice and never made it much further than Molloy, but I guess I’ve come to a place where I can read it and be absorbed by it, absorbed. Someone said once, I forget who, that you really can’t read/enjoy/understand the greats until you yourself have lived for awhile, lived the things that the books are about. Not that I’m old and wise, gawdnoiamnot, but suddenly the long long winded Russians seem exciting and Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the close of Ulysses seems, uhhh, doable. I do hope by my 40s I’ll be able to get to Finnegan’s Wake, and even develop the patience for poetry.
[...]you must go on, I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have caried me to the threshold of my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.
-from The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett
That takes me to a different world. Yes it does.
One of the canons of the contemporary American canon, John Updike, died yesterday.
photo: “Massachusetts – John Updike, 1962. ©Dennis Stock / Magnum.
“We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.”
-John Updike
…though I much prefer,
“Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.”
-John Updike
While taking these Saul Bellow’s phrase “inner-fate” from Humboldt’s Gift was whispering in my ear, gentle murmurs and soft susurrations of something powerful beautiful cruel, or otherwise in the words of the bold Humboldt himself, “I was manic. I was chattering from the dusty top of my crazy head. Afterward I was depressed and silent for long, long days. I lay in the cage. Grim gorilla days.”
(! Goodgod, now. That’s fine fine prose.)
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008
(And maybe you noticed that I increased the image size. This should have been done a long time ago. A lot of these images really need to be seen bigger (a cliche line from the photographer if ever there was one). The template I use is limited, but maybe the little bump will make them more enjoyable. Let me know if it’s an improvement, if it slows things down too much, or if it makes no difference?)
poem: by E.E. Cummings
(
photo: E.E. Cummings, 1953, by Walter Albertin for New York World Telegram
)
Makes me think of smoking poets and then of Richard Prince‘s Untitled (Cowboy):
photo: Untitled (Cowboy) (1989), ©Richard Prince.
And that’s plenty for now.
Tons. Masses.
Like when at the MOMA the other day and I saw for the first time Edvard Munch’s The Storm.
painting: The Storm (1893) by Edvard Munch.
I couldn’t possibly look at anything after that – it was entirely too much already.
I wanted to share this link to interviews of photographers by Frank Horvart. I skimmed the Newton one, which was good, and Sieff is always erudite and deep (French after all…). I’d expect the same of Witkin.
Super short post, but they should be good reading for awhile.
Oh, and a movie: someone sent me some segments of a flim William Klein did in 1986 called Contacts. Worth digging up if you can find it.
Oh, and speaking of Helmut and back to the topic of yesterdays post of Avedon’s sartorial sense, check out the snakeskin belt (↓)!
photo: Helmut Newton. ©David Hurn/Magnum.
A article on Robert Frank in the Times, here. Including a multimedia feature, here.
photo: “Canal Street – New Orleans, 1955″ from The Americans, ©Robert Frank.
photo: “Robert Frank, photographer, Mabou Mines, Nova Scotiam July 17, 1975″ ©Richard Avedon.
(Of course another artist initialed R.F. who defined a sort of America
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.“The Road Not Taken”
-Robert Frost
.)
And as much as I try to avoid regurgitation by linking to blog posts elsewhere, this interview with Chris Buck is enough for an exception, part 1 and part 2.
photo: Philip-Lorca diCorcia for PDN magazine, ©Chris Buck.
That portrait by Chris is of, as you probably know, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, who’s work isn’t trivial. I thought he’d be a good end note to kick the week off with.
photo: “Gianni,” ©Philip-lorca diCorcia.
I came by this incredible apocalyptic (chic right now) sci-fi (ditto) film, La Jetée, over at Amy Stein’s blog.
To say this short film is visually remarkable is a remarkable understatement. And further, the minimal creativity of it will make you long for a time when work like this was conceived, let alone completed. It’s at once brilliant and beautiful, which are two things not easy to couple. Needless to say, it got into my head b/c I’ve never really seen anything like it.
But watch it for yourself, here in 3 parts. It might be one of the best half hours of your week.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
(Amy also mentioned on her blog that there is a book version of La Jetée‘s images with the narrative as text by MIT press (here). My notion is that it’d be excellent.)
(Also, it occurred to me by the end that this short was the inspiration for 12 Monkeys.)
(And while we’re on the video blitz of gloom. T.S. Eliot’s great poem “The Hollow Men” as recited by Marlon Brando (playing Kurtz in Apocolypse Now (Redux version), which makes sense, b/c one of Eliot’s main inspirations for “Hollow Men” was Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, which as you know was the basis of Apocalypse Now. The film does leave out the opening line of Eliot’s poem, “Mistah Kurtz – he dead”):
“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper”
-final stanza of “The Hollow Men”
photo: T.S. Eliot at his desk, Jan 18, 1944. ©Bob Landry/Life Images.
…)
And it comes full circle, B/c the French film maker Chris Marker who did La Jetée also did a multimedia installation on Eliot’s “Hollow Men” titled OWLS AT NOON Prelude: The Hollow Men. I’ve not seen it nor can I find it.
Children’s book author, Katie Van Camp.
photo: Katie Van Camp, NYC, 2008. ©Graeme Mitchell.