A present, gift wrapped in snow, for Morgan. Lovely. You capture the whole of the image by isolating just one part,a part you wish to emphasize, perhaps for symbolic reasons. Tn prose it's called synecdoche and in your photography, as well as in your lyrical prose, you use it quite effectively all the time. To "understand", to open the impact of an image and reach into its heart, one has to take into account the symbolic forms of its information. In art, one has to learn at some point, strangely enough, to pay "no" attention to the shapes, the lines, the colours and get directly to the meaning - to distinguish between the sensuous pleasure or surface charm of the work and its meaning, its metaphorical force, its truth. Sure the image can stand on its own beauty I hear you say, but sometimes as I stare at an image, it just stares right back at me. Your photography works at that level of perception and that level leads to meaning. These too balanced and unafraid "eyes" on this time-worn truck - one large, one small, one above the other, one framed, one not - look with some defiance, with some pride down the road of the future. The "truck" has travelled and conquered this road for over 50 years, and it will simply continue to do so. I'm reminded of that famous Victorian poem Invictus: "My head is bloody but unbowed", "It matters not how straight the gate/How charged with punishments the scroll/I am the master of my fate/The captain of my soul". Most appropriately, you press this concept upon us as we move into a new year, a new year full of hope. You wish that we, too, may be "unconquerable". We have much to learn from this old and bloodied "truck' do we not? Thanks for the forceful meaning implicit in this single and "simple" image of an old truck covered in snow.
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A present, gift wrapped in snow, for Morgan. Lovely.
ReplyDeleteYou capture the whole of the image by isolating just one part,a part you wish to emphasize, perhaps for symbolic reasons. Tn prose it's called synecdoche and in your photography, as well as in your lyrical prose, you use it quite effectively all the time. To "understand", to open the impact of an image and reach into its heart, one has to take into account the symbolic forms of its information. In art, one has to learn at some point, strangely enough, to pay "no" attention to the shapes, the lines, the colours and get directly to the meaning - to distinguish between the sensuous pleasure or surface charm of the work and its meaning, its metaphorical force, its truth. Sure the image can stand on its own beauty I hear you say, but sometimes as I stare at an image, it just stares right back at me. Your photography works at that level of perception and that level leads to meaning. These too balanced and unafraid "eyes" on this time-worn truck - one large, one small, one above the other, one framed, one not - look with some defiance, with some pride down the road of the future. The "truck" has travelled and conquered this road for over 50 years, and it will simply continue to do so. I'm reminded of that famous Victorian poem Invictus: "My head is bloody but unbowed", "It matters not how straight the gate/How charged with punishments the scroll/I am the master of my fate/The captain of my soul". Most appropriately, you press this concept upon us as we move into a new year, a new year full of hope. You wish that we, too, may be "unconquerable". We have much to learn from this old and bloodied "truck' do we not? Thanks for the forceful meaning implicit in this single and "simple" image of an old truck covered in snow.