Month: November 2022

Basil

I have previously posted pictures of this basil plant: it’s silhouette with frost behind, its shadow on the wall or the floor. Here is its reflection in the window in front of which it sits and a fairly straight picture of it in daylight.

Still point of the turning world

In thinking about the haiku form (see last post) I have been considering Japanese calligraphy and images which have a very calligraphic look to them. I also think of various Buddhist concepts, like Eliot’s “still point of the turning world,” in the Four Quartets.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

Here is a Bashō (considered by many the greatest practitioner of the haiku form):

One way or another, I think the image selection above (most taken on a walk to Caesar’s Camp in north Farnham) all have a kind of calligraphic, still feeling to them. Click any image to see them all full-sized.

Petals on a wet, black bough

I continue to work on my haiku project. Finding ‘petals on wet, black boughs’ is proving difficult. Above, this week’s selection of ‘leaves on dark backgrounds.’ It is, after all, not necessary to be literal. I can call on poetic license, can I not? Click any image to see them all enlarged.

Here is Pound’s original haiku:

250 Images You Need to See

Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, UK

I can’t say enough good things about the Justine Kurland workshop I was fortunate to attend at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol. She was a fantastic workshop leader, full of inspiring and insightful things to say about both photography and making art generally. The book I brought to cut up was Photobox The Essential Collection: 250 Images You Need to See, which exhibited the usual prejudice for male photographers (although, as I scoured it for useful material I found more women in it than I had noticed at first).

Above, the collage I started under her tutelage. I look forward to finishing it. You may recognize bits of some famous images (or their outlines) in the work above. I recommend Girl Pictures and the SCUMB Manifesto highly.

Eiffelettes

Eiffel Tower, Paris

All around the Eiffel Tower, the Trocadero, the Champ de Mars, and elsewhere too, no doubt, merchants offer statuettes of the famous tower in different sizes and colors, some with twinkling lights.

Photo, Sculpture and Painting

Victor Brauner, Conglomeros, 1945. Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris

In Plato’s cave allegory we are bound and can only see images of the shadows cast by statues of real things. As we free our minds, we first discover that we are looking at mere images, shadows. Next we discover that the shadows are cast not by the real but by statues, imitations of the ideals which they represent. Only when we emerge from the cave do we discover the world of real things.