RE the Poetics Set

In the poetics set there was some question of what is the glue that holds the images together.  There are three similar moments:  the boy before the light spilling down the stairs; the man before the light spilling across the water; and the woman in the row boat turning into the light spilling through the trees and away from her partner in the boat.  The other two photos in the set provide context for an exploration of those moments.

There are obviously stylistic differences between the photographs that are disruptive.  This disruption is part of overarching concerns with surface (how to penetrate?) and distance (how to collapse?). This holds true across the set.  See comments below re hitting a head against a wall.

General Notes re Walden Images

In every photograph of a person at Walden there are actually at least three people.  There is the person visibly in the frame; there is the photographer; and there is Thoreau –  that tedious, heroic figure.  And I would add to this cast of characters the place itself, Walden, which has its own voice (both imagined and real).  I am interested in exploring the relationship between these four personalities, so that even when there is no person in the frame there is still a dialogue.

I am interested in the voices that can be heard, but also those that really can’t (the voice of Walden itself, as part of an ecosystem that ignores its own name; the voice of the people in the frame, what they are truly saying).

What is strange about these various dialogues is that if you can hear anything at all, you can hear only a snippet, and, to me, there is some great poetic frustration in that.

The photograph is a rendering of an instant in time.  Because the instant is rendered, there is a great opportunity to explore it.  This is kind of like running your hands through a chest of gold coins that turns out to be a hologram (the sense of value lingers). Or like hitting your head against a wall, which is a good description of philosophy, generally speaking.

All the available dialogues are important to my sense of this place, but perhaps I am most compelled when there is a person in the frame.  Here the dialogue is primarily about that person’s interaction with Walden.  It is private and very valuable and there is something intrusive, even violent, about my presence and the act of photographing.  I am also struck by how these moments of private dialogue transcend considerations of the historicity of the place.  I did not expect that.

The point of using extreme crops is  partially to expose the limitations of the photograph – its status as rendering, its nature as surface.  Yet, this is not merely an aesthetic exercise.  The aim is to articulate both the temporal and spatial distance between the photographer and the person in the frame.   I cannot hear what that person is saying, but I want to so badly.

And thus begins, the fifth dialogue.  The dialogue of the photograph with the viewer.

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