NYC Journal 60, including text
[Insert text here on the state of the psyche-state with impetuses ranging from changing of seasons, the economy, voting, war, forsaking by G_d, the economy. Mix hopeful and rhetorically clever platitudes cloaked in flowery speak w/ laconic jabs of irony and maybe-it’s-a-conspiracy-half-joking-humor, mix should be approx 70 to 30…% that is. Note story of Slavic man who swam laps in the Atlantic Ocean at Coney Island on a cold cold day (ex-Russian special forces, possible if not likely). Connection: not sure, but have you ever? Highlight, the 2 fights at the grocery store the other day, which neared punches been thrown, involving all old people. On that note you can if you wish go into how reactionary people have been towards…no never mind, but do note the the group of guys who alluded to you getting stabbed (as in shived) if you took pictures. As for these scenarios, maybe suggest sublimation if you’re the aggressor, or remaining numinous if you’re on the receiving end. Touch on the changing of the leaves and the coming of a revolution, spiritual, political, whatever, (but don’t shy from a heavy-handed analogy there in regards to the possibility of being on the brink of something akin psychologically to the the landscape post apolocolypse (this fall seems feasible (or maybe it’s not (but still pretty sure that, yeah, it is)))). There could be some value in quoting some dark passage on Hell from Lowry’s, Under the Volcano or Gass‘, The Tunnel. (Praise Gass’ prose on par with Joyce, and a tonic that can get you stewed and through the hard nights that follow these sorts of hard days.) But do not, I repeat, do not, go on at length fondling this literary tangent, b/c nobody cares, nor furthermore do they think it has anything to do with pictures; you’ve concocted that construction entirely in your head. And as far as the, the pictures, try and say as little about them as possible.]
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.
Photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008.
Photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008.
YES YES YES!
glad you didn’t get “shived”.
What is that last picture of?
Mr. Diggles, the last picture was taken at the beach, sand on a windy day.
Your street photography is really amazing. Killing it.
Photography and Joyce have EVERYTHING to do with eachother. They are the same, or at least the source is the same, what is recorded from the stream, what is presented from our moments. What is compelling is the recognition, in the other’s stream of moments, of our own moments. Great stuff.
I should add that the above comment was addressing part of Graeme’s introduction where he was discussing the Gass and compared him to Joyce.
Terraplane, we are in complete agreement as to this sort of photography and Joyce’s work.
The universal in the specific…
The course of this discussion may lead to the idea that one of the main themes (or as I read once, the main characters) of Joyce’s work is the language itself.
Language creating a sort of framework (and thus limit) to our ability to understand and percieve, to our reality…as I read someplace else, philosophy is fundamentally the studying of those limits of language. it is where Joyce went, where Beckett went, where all writers go, or attempt to go, as writers and philosophers at some higher point become one in the same.
I think photography is the same sort of study. Struggling out to that edge…
…that blows back like a great unimaginable headwind.
Anything that mediates between thought and expression will fail on some level. It has to. Eggleston, when asked what his photographs “mean”, where his inspiration comes from, stared blankly with his mouth open, slowly shaking his head and said something to the effect of “I can’t put it into words”. This is what I think he was addressing: the emotional source of art. The source is a place above verbalization. It might be above reason, it is certainly chemical. Translating that into a photograph is futile, or a painting, or the written word, although maybe Joyce did it, an almost unmediated tap into a universal consciousness. The trick is preserving the essence of unverbalized thought in media.
But yes, the limits of any framework are where all the good things happen. Joyce’s use of language is unique, really. I love Pynchon, and I love Don Delillo, their use of language can sting, but not in the same way as Joyce. Joyce has a dimensionality to his language that is astonishing. Stinging, tender. Profane, beautiful, pulling the readers’ experience into his text, makes it breathe. Put into historical context, you see Joyce pushing against the language, against the form of a novel, generally, against the state, against tradition, striking a mighty blow for the new Modernism.
The study of language and the merger of fiction and philosophy is really interesting. It is the essence of what philosophers do, and writers as well. I’ve always liked the gradual philosophical tack fiction takes. Eco, Delillo, Pynchon, Sartre write with a point of view which is of course their experience. The way they see things. Their novels become emblematic of certain philosophies but I don’t believe that they started out that way. They put meat on the abstractions of Derrida, Semiotics, Lyotard, Lacan etc. They humanize Schopenhauer, or at least make him relevant to a larger audience.
Which begs the question, what is photography doing today? I really like Eggelston, some Opie stuff, but damn if most everything out of MFA programs (especially in NYC) all seem so familiar. The Dykstra/Opie/Soth postmodern portrait, a style that first surfaced in 1996 or so, is still being imitated, and lauded. The feeling I get is that things are moving towards something more genuine. Something that is closer to a universal experience through the specific, and its back to Joyce.
“Which begs the question, what is photography doing today?”
Terraplane, this question would be the key given this forum wouldn’t it? And even though I think it’s dangerous and a fallacy to consider it too deeply or for too long a time, personally anyway, it still crosses the ol’mind. But with that, I’d agree with your take. Partially b/c it’s a cyclical thing, as life…so the irony will dwindle and an honesty will be reborn. But a new honesty. The modernist period will never be again, not in it’s naivete in regards to truth and love…no matter how hard I pine for it. There are to many blankets of deception now, or so we make ourselves think. Some other thing will come though either gently or as a great fracture. But we’ll not be told about it until someone writes it all out in a neat and tidy package for the canon 5 decades from now.
I really appreciate your thoughts here though. Thank you.
You are welcome!