city through the willow

city through the willow, originally uploaded by sarafigal.

Photographic contingency: I identified the frame of space and the movement in time that I hoped to capture; the Rollei did what it was engineered to do, admitting light into its box for a slightly extended instant; and the world moved and breathed around my intentions and the camera’s precision.

Traces of Red, the Heart of the Woods

I have three images, variations of one idea I played with on a walk with a camera through the woods: a red scarf left dangling on a branch. It started as a formal play with color and flow and an interesting lens on my Mamiya C330. It ended with images that evoke several things, Red Riding Hood prominent among them.

The images get progressively more abstract:

And finally, the Heart of the Woods:

 

and in that desert, there was a tower

once upon a time, there was a city. in that city, there was a desert; and in that desert, there was a tower. in that tower was a furnace filled with things that once had discernible shape. through the tower filtered light from the iron door left open. there was no evidence of a long-haired princess.

Dreaming sleeping

Henry, dreamer, a tangle of roots and tendrils bridging the worlds we call childhood and adulthood. He tests the resistance of concepts: up, down, real, possible, meaningful. He floats and flows and twists and laughs from perspectives that are entirely his own; then suddenly he withdraws to absorb the shock of life’s contingencies, vagaries, absurdities. He crafts stories and games and arguments in retaliation, marking pathways from here to somewhere not here. He dreams, and I watch, close up but through a blur.

Photograph take with the pinhole zero69 wooden camera, using medium-format roll film.

Once upon a time, said the old book

Once upon a time, said the old book, once upon a time.

Go on, urged the silverfish.

I won’t be able to if you continue eating.

Go on then…

Four old books contributed materially to this art book. The process: I tore pages from the antiquarian volumes into small bits and collaged them, or I cut pages into strips and wove them together; the results were scanned and printed or transferred onto heavy art papers.  Most pages of this new book contain these abstract designs; several others have brief story texts or bibliographic information on the books used for the project. The central and smallest pages have pieces of the original books collaged directly onto transparency paper so that one can feel them.

This book belongs to the series, “A Book for a Book.” If I make enough of these, they will constitute a gesture of Baroque vanitas, rendering beautiful the detritus of culture ever less interested in antiquarian books, a remembrance of texts that cannot be read any more.

Concrete Shadows

I like the way this image blends the rough textures of stone and concrete with the ephemeral beauty of spring leaves’ shadows. A momentary play of light brushes across a construction of permanence, an aggressive architecture of resistance against vulnerability, a monument of and for human work that, in the end, is equally fleeting.

This was taken the other day with the Rollei 3.5f, a camera made in 1958. My husband took the exposed film (Ilford Delta 400) into his darkroom and developed it in diafine. Much of the roll came out well–it was a good day for pictures.

Along the River

I made photograph with my wooden pinhole box camera, the Zeroimage 69, by overlaying exposures onto the film. The image pleases me greatly–it feels like a familiar dream, dark and only almost accessible. To be honest, I do not know quite how or where I made this photograph. It was in Michigan, that much I can assert, but how? This place of the image, half-unknown, has a specificity that is sharper than the memories I can access. This is a dream river, this is the alchemy of film taking my story and changing it in ways I can only follow, not control. There are two boats, two boys, on a river or stream or marsh going somewhere. Where are they? going?

along the river, originally uploaded by sarafigal.

Henry at the art show

Mojo, originally uploaded by zenman_63.

There is Henry, who immediately realized he would be more comfortable working the show. He walked through a few times, made his judgements, and then did everything the lovely Courtney told him to do.

Philip at an art show

Mojo, originally uploaded by zenman_63.

Philip (7 years, 1st grade) had to take off his skates to come to the Untitled Art show, where I happened to have a piece on display. However, he kept his pads on as badges of honor and identity.

Here we see him next to the one painting he loved more than all others, the painting that he longs to have in his room (“just knock a wall down!”): the great eyeball painting by Philip’s art-world hero, Dustin Dirt!. I probably should buy it for him.

Old Books

I love books. I would far rather read from a real book, turning tattered and sticky and imperfectly printed pages in my hands, than read from a smooth screen. It is not a preference linked to principle; it is, I suspect, little more than a preference linked to the history of my personal relationship to reading.

This love of reading books, however, does not in my case produce the corollary taken for granted by many of my friends: namely, that a love of books is equivalent to a reverence for all objects that happen to be books. I am not a book fetishist. I do write in books. I dog-ear pages. I leave books opened upside-down for days on end.

And now, I am turning many books into art projects. I have too many books, and many are of interest only to academics in a field that is quickly disappearing in this country. When I clear out my professorial office this summer, I will have more than a genteel “too many.” Should I box them and put them in the shed or the attic to rot, willfully forgotten? Such a renunciation is too sad an image. No.

I will not carve the novels or plays or poems, unless I have three or more complete editions (yes, this does occur at present in my library). And historic editions are safe…well, ok, if I had cabinetry skills, I would make furniture out of my complete Weimarer Ausgabe of Goethe — all 133 or so leather-bound, nineteenth-century volumes — but since I lack these skills, this set is safe for now. However, old journal runs and mid-century secondary works are prime for translation-into-art-object.

My books will change and adapt with me. And this way, someone — at the very least, I — will continue to appreciate and interact with them.