( Farway places seem the closest as remote ideas the ones I hold in my heart. I have been left, lost, cheated & lied to but I have never, ever been betrayed by my own fantasies. In fact some of them have even become ardent realities. )
What do memories mean to a nation that has none ? History is constructed with when the bullet’s outside the barrel & shutter is snapped shut. We edit our definitions with every image pasted in the album or placed in textbooks. The real is demonstrated in facts, the lens is a science & the camera a sword.
( The pictures of me on the first day of school lasted a year into the first grade, for father was taken before graduation & mother opted not to draw the camera. Mine is a childhood forgotten & seldom recorded. I remember naught before this moment. )
Our task is not to make you believe what we believe so much as to make you see exactly what we see. We fight for the right to be represented as to be seen & heard is as to breath. Yet the soldier in Capa’s picture, did he actually fall ? Facts have become unstable & all constructions de . . .
( I want to build myself a new life but I’m afraid to find the words their meanings. )
So we shant speak for truth anymore, & we could never speak for you. Ours is a new state of desire & a government of infinite questioning. Our propaganda will not deliver to you the word as our sentences are made up of yrs & yrs & yrs. We had a dream tomorrow night of the great fires of yesterday.
( This vision is the real of imagination, rumination & literature. I speak of when only when told. For then does not exist only this moment in now. )
We want to talk to you. To hear yr words & breath yr thoughts. We are not here to tell you anymore. We seek only to listen & re record the images & bullets yr own eyes have seen. For histories do not repeat themselves so much as undulate & intertwine. A new text is forming from deep within the mines.
( The time is now. The place is here. The I is we. )
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
unknowing is the beginning of the accumulation of knowledge
a photograph is about a particular event at a particular time
a contact sheet is about chronology.
one (particular) photographic event leading into another.
the rest is history. the stuff around. the stuff beyond.
the photograph is comparable to a tale told at the dinner table.
a record of the day's events.
the record of days (of) events becomes history - in()between the frames.
much too weighty for jovial dinner-time conversation.
histories scream but are seldom heard.
books & scholars sifting through dust
the mire of what once was, chiseled out of water.
the lens silences that which can not be re presented.
silence are facts dying.
yet we must intervene
photographers are practitioners of history - albeit anecdotally
how does a brief sketch become a haunting vision ?
when a contact sheet reveals more than its author intended
when the machine sees more than the eye.
how am i to decide what's true -
i'm even unsure
whether the soldier
in Capa's image actually fell.
( the space between a document & an image
the place in which our conversation must start. )
a contact sheet is about chronology.
one (particular) photographic event leading into another.
the rest is history. the stuff around. the stuff beyond.
the photograph is comparable to a tale told at the dinner table.
a record of the day's events.
the record of days (of) events becomes history - in()between the frames.
much too weighty for jovial dinner-time conversation.
histories scream but are seldom heard.
books & scholars sifting through dust
the mire of what once was, chiseled out of water.
the lens silences that which can not be re presented.
silence are facts dying.
yet we must intervene
photographers are practitioners of history - albeit anecdotally
how does a brief sketch become a haunting vision ?
when a contact sheet reveals more than its author intended
when the machine sees more than the eye.
how am i to decide what's true -
i'm even unsure
whether the soldier
in Capa's image actually fell.
( the space between a document & an image
the place in which our conversation must start. )
Monday, October 1, 2007
con(ned)text
photographs are only about the look of things
( how does this look & to whom )
appearance is a surface we battle with consistently
( by battle i mean accept )
if we could ennact our assumptions
( we might begin to understand )
by understand i mean nt
( nt a wor[l]d of appearances )
( how does this look & to whom )
questions are photographs are phragments
( the surface of reality )
is the slipperiest of slopes
( words precede & follow photographs )
with out them we are left asking
( questions are a desire )
must every desire must be phulfilled
( how does this look & to whom )
what of photography is desire
( to look upon a thing )
to learn something new about some thing
is to see to know
( could we call this a document )
what does construct mean
( in a wor[l]d ripe with illusion )
i polish this surface
( with every photograph never uttered )
i scour this surface
( with every object written in emulsion )
( how does this look & to whom )
appearance is a surface we battle with consistently
( by battle i mean accept )
if we could ennact our assumptions
( we might begin to understand )
by understand i mean nt
( nt a wor[l]d of appearances )
( how does this look & to whom )
questions are photographs are phragments
( the surface of reality )
is the slipperiest of slopes
( words precede & follow photographs )
with out them we are left asking
( questions are a desire )
must every desire must be phulfilled
( how does this look & to whom )
what of photography is desire
( to look upon a thing )
to learn something new about some thing
is to see to know
( could we call this a document )
what does construct mean
( in a wor[l]d ripe with illusion )
i polish this surface
( with every photograph never uttered )
i scour this surface
( with every object written in emulsion )
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
