Reopening soon in new premises. Maybe.
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tasting rhubarb
The
early fog never quite lifted today. When I went out later something of it lingered -
not really a mist, not even a blurring, but a softening of light and colour
that I'd never seen before. Everything soft and thick like velvet. The low, low
sun strong but diffused. A faint but distinct sheen on walls and pavements.
And the sky such a dark blue. Not dark like a storm or dark like dusk, but a
new shade. Some things can't be predicted or described or encompassed. Some
things, some days are just astonishing and lovely.
Wild storms and flooding from the sea. The news of all this interrupted for the announcement that the bright light of Nelson Mandela has gone out. And around our little lake the rampant vegetation shrinks and cracks and flares as it shades into winter.
Thick might seem an
odd word for these, for the big, pale, blurry, fragile images taken with a
pinhole camera, for the standing figure,
outside one picture, inside another, both solid and transparent. It was an exhibition
of works by Karen Stuke, depicting places described in Sebald's masterwork
Austerlitz about a man brought to Britain from Prague on a
Kindertransport, his adult discovery of his past and voyage into it, the huge
effect upon his personality and life, his recounting of his story to the
narrator. It's a long, pale, swirling story, hauntingly glimpsed in these
photos (see them all here), which were deeply atmospheric in themselves, all the more so in the
harsh beauty of the Wapping Project, a cavernous, largely windowless former hydraulic power station, and all the more so to the
captivated reader, like myself, of Sebald's work.
A big thing in 'street photography', I suppose, is the lack of a frame, the freedom from it, the capturing of a random, unboundaried flash of space and time that is in some way affecting. But the point here, of course, is precisely the frame of door and window shapes behind the figure. She's walking past the front entrance of Tate Modern and the framed figure fortuitously evokes the pictures inside - perhaps was only noticed because, approaching the entrance, I was already 'seeing' the paintings I'd come to look at.
tasting rhubarb
Monday, 26 May 2014
Wednesday, 1 January 2014
Wednesday, 25 December 2013
Thursday, 19 December 2013
Thursday, 12 December 2013
Dark sunlight
Friday, 6 December 2013
Planet stirring
Thursday, 28 November 2013
Thick
I was thinking of the way that social scientists, ethnographers, speak of 'thick description', a build-up of multiple layers and
perspectives through which we may arrive at new insights. It starts with the
book, a meandering, but intense and gripping narrative. No, it starts with the
real places, historical narratives and found pictures that the book evokes
and the visceral, unbearable, memories attached to these. And it spreads,
alludes, moves and inspires, as writers and artists continue to make works in
response to Sebald's; as readers and viewers are drawn in, tossed around, left
floating, yearning, glimpsing pictures of our own, like this one through the window of the old power station on my way out.
Wednesday, 20 November 2013
To frame or not to frame
Monday, 18 November 2013
Thursday, 14 November 2013
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