just another dead poet
Consider this a collection of scribblings cast from the margins of my mind.
bring back the cyanotypes!
The other day (last week?) I stopped in to see local photographer Graham Ward’s show “Camera Obscura” for which he created his own camera (obscura) using glass plate negatives and all the chemicals. Funny how now that we’re ‘blessed’ with all of these new technologies designed for making things ‘easier’ we discover that the quality is lacking and we strive (as artists, as people) to make things more difficult for ourselves. quality over quantity every time. that is why i work only with a film camera. Graham you have me beat.
His photographs are living fairy tales. Not the cute kind, but more like fables or parables. Stories you’d tell your children to scare them into staying inside but also the kind that make them want to enter the dark woods at night just to see if they can make it out alive.
Just read a passage from “House of Leaves” (yes, I’m still reading it…) that reminded me of my experience of viewing these photographs:
“I went outside. Tried taking in the billions of stars above, lingering long enough to allow each point of light the chance to scratch a deep hole in the back of my retina, so that when I finally did turn to face the dark surrounding forest I thought I saw the eyes of a billion cats blinking out, in the math of the living, the sum of the universe, the stories of history, a life older than anyone could have ever imagined. And even after they were gone—fading away together, as if they really were one—something still lingered in those sweet folds of black pine, sitting quietly, almost as if it too were waiting for something to wake” (509).
