Nothing new under the sun…

It’s been an interesting and sordid few weeks, which as usual doesn’t leave me much time to post here, but excuses excuses… During this time I’d been thinking of the old adage that there is nothing new under the sun, thinking of that school of literature that was dubbed the literature of exhaustion (exhaustion of ideas/narrative, that is), and thinking even that which is new is based on the same premises and motivations of what’s come before. This is neither bad nor good. What it is is a perspective of humility, as the stories we tell have been told before, the wars we fight have been fought before, and the ordeals we face have been faced before…

This theme came to a head today in a very simple way as I was heading out to shoot more NYC Journal stuff. I saw this flier for Erwitt’s own NYC Journals (so to speak) on auction at Christies (credit goes to Alec Soth posting it on his blog where I found it). The thinking of nothing new under the sun had been abstract, but this Erwitt flier made it specific and material. My little notebooks of pictures I take pride in, have not only been done before, but done by Eliot Erwitt. His look beautiful too:

erwitt.jpg

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