Abstracted naturalism

How do you describe how someone is posing in carte de visites made at Dunedin between 1876 and 1880? Stiff? Relaxed? Modelled? Formal? Or, articulated? Here are three portraits of an unknown person. The first was made in 1876, the remaining two during 1880. There are no handwritten inscriptions on the verso other than the years in which they were made.

I propose that the first portrait is of the young man aged about 16, while the other two show him aged about 20 years.

Notice that as he ages the point of view towards the sitter alters from being above to the lens being parallel to him. This gives more authority to the sitter and appears to increase their height.



I suggest that each pose is totally articulated by the photographer with all four limbs set so that the hands are either supporting an object, or giving support to the figure’s body. With the pose being held set for up to a minute to ‘set’ before each of the exposures was made.

The idea of the sitter first being articulated in a pose, then set in that pose and then recorded was part of the entire studio process for portrait carte de visites. Consequently, the naturalism is only ‘natural’ in that the sitter appears to be comfortable. In reality, they frequently were not comfortable. Remember people then did not have the self-consciousness of what they were looking like that we have today.

St Bede’s vs Christ College

Photography of sport is now some of the most complex action images being created. With moving cameras, operating from multiple viewpoints it is possible to experience competition from within the game. This was not always the case. In fact, even during the 1970s action shots were frequently achieved using miniature 35mm cameras and fast film stocks like Kodak TRI-X.

I came across recently one of the earliest examples of action sports photography made in New Zealand. The image is of a rugby game between pupils of St Bede’s College (striped jerseys) and Christ’s College. Made in Christchurch during the winter of 1946, it is probable that the shot was taken by a photographer for The Press using a Speed-Graphic camera.

Ross Becker

http://picasaweb.google.com/rossbeckernz

Professor Ian Lochead of the University of Canterbury informed me that one of the best websites to access photographs documenting Christchurch is maintained by Ross Becker.

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection

Of all the British poets of the Victorian period, only Gerard Manley Hopkins appears to write modern poetry. F.R. Leavis considered Hopkins the greatest Victorian poet. His relatively small output of poems does not diminish the stature of his achievement at all. I have read his poetry since I was 14 and it never fails to energise me. It is, I reckon, still shockingly inventive with its portmanteau words and sprung rhythms.

Heraclitus lived around 500 BCE and was a philosopher who considered that everything was created by fire and constantly in states of change and growth. Such apocalyptic thinking was visionary fuel for Hopkins, for whom the practice of the Roman Catholic faith was a commitment to spiritual transformation.

Hopkins was the closest English writer to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau’s transcendental commitment to the existential influence of nature. He called this knowledge ‘inscape’. Everything in nature was separate from all other things yet totally intertwined by a cosmological weaving together.

Looking at the Vincent van Gogh painting of the landscape currently on loan to the Gallery from the National Gallery of Scotland, I thought that there is a vein shared between van Gogh and Hopkins that cherishes nature through a vision of its own self-transformation.

Here is one of Hopkins’s last poems from 1888.

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; world's wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond

Late words – Christopher Hitchens

Vanity Fair have continued their generous practice of making some of their finest commissioned writing available at no cost via their website.

One of the very last essays by Christopher Hitchens is a meditation on the supposed quote by Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.’ Christopher did not agree and his essay will convince you with his argument. It is one of his bravest texts and will stun you with its honesty.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/01/hitchens-201201.print

The final paragraph of Christopher’s great essay begins:
‘I am attracted to the German etymology of the word “stark,” and its relative used by Nietzsche, stärker, which means “stronger.” In Yiddish, to call someone a shtarker is to credit him with being a militant, a tough guy, a hard worker.’

Here is a distinguished writer who knows that Yiddish can express meanings that no other language can share so effectively.

Photograph of Christopher Hitchens courtesy of the blog of Charles P. Peirce and Esquire.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/christopher-hitchens-6618124

Chris Levine’s Portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

One of the most inventive and important photographers working today is Chris Levine. Born in 1972 in Canada, his work is internationally acclaimed for both its human insight and its astonishing intimacy.

During 2004, Chris Levine was commissioned to make a portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

In the course of one day, there were a few minutes of rest and repose. During those moments, he produced an unforgettable image of the Queen with her eyes closed. This image must rank as one of the most memorable images ever made of the world’s most famous woman.

To access Chris’s work refer to his website:
http://www.chrislevine.com/wd/?page_id=1759

He recounted for The Guardian in 2009, the situation that led to his portrait of Her Majesty -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/aug/19/photography-chris-levine-best-shot/print

Here are Chris’s comments from The Guardian:
“I was commissioned to make a holographic portrait of the Queen in 2004, as part of Jersey's celebrations of its 800-year-old relationship with the monarchy. She was tickled by the idea of having a hologram done. I assumed there would be layers of bureaucracy when it came to telling her what to do — but the truth is, if she wants to be involved, it goes straight on to her desk. She is in control, there's no question about that.

I also assumed there would be committees dealing with what had to be put into the image: props, or iconography, or costumes. But they asked me what I wanted her to wear, so I got the opportunity to style the Queen. I looked at the crown jewels, and picked out a clean, simple crown with a cross. It was quite a thrilling moment when she walked in the door, wearing exactly what I'd asked her to.

During the shoot, there was a lot of bright light, noise, and each exposure took eight seconds, which is a long time to have to sit still. I wanted the Queen to feel peaceful, so I asked her to rest between shots; this was a moment of stillness that just happened.

Meditation was having a profound impact on my life at the time. I told her about how I'd go off on 10-day silent retreats, and she was very interested. I timed the exposures around her breathing – it seemed a way of tuning into her. Later, this image really stood out – it has such an aura about it, a power.

The challenge was to make an image that was modern, and to convey the Queen's relationship with the new millennium. It didn't have to be an oil painting or a conventional photograph. Why not have her eyes shut? We all close our eyes: this picture takes us into the Queen's mind, her inner realm.”

At Chris’s website you can see him discussing his great portrait:
http://www.chrislevine.com/wd/?page_id=14

Image copyright to Chris Levine.
With sincere thanks to the artist.

More about Diane Arbus

I found some wonderful quotes by Diane Arbus that are totally underknown. You cannot escape Arbus's art, it is searing and unforgettable. She created some of the scariest images ever made by an Amercian artist.

I cannot reproduce any of her photographs here as her estate like to determine where her brilliant images are accessed.

Arbus on work
I hated painting and I quit right after high school because I was continually told how terrific I was… it made me feel shaky. I remember I hated the smell of the paint and the noise it would make when I put my brush to the paper. Sometimes I wouldn’t really look but just listen to this horrible squish, squish, squish. I didn’t want to be told I was terrific. I had the sense that if I was so terrific at it, it wasn’t worth doing.
Radio interview with Studs Terkel, 1968

In the beginning of photographing I used to make very grainy things. I’d be fascinated by what the grain did because it would make a kind of tapestry of all these little dots and everything would be translated into this medium of dots. Skin would be the same as water would be the same as sky and you were dealing mostly in dark and light, not so much in flesh and blood… It was my teacher, Lisette Model, who finally made it clear to me that the more specific you are, the more general it’ll be…
from Diane Arbus, Aperture, 1972

They are the proof that something was there and no longer is. Like a stain. And the stillness of them is boggling. You can turn away but when you come back they’ll still be there looking at you.
from a letter to Davis Pratt, Fogg Museum, Cambridge, 1971, in response to a request for a brief statement about photographs

On her subjects
I am working on something now, the eccentrics I have so long thought of, or rather people who visibly believe in something everyone doubts, and remembering A Commodity of Dreams [the title of Howard Nemerov’s collected short stories, published by Secker & Warburg, London, 1960] I wondered if there were any such anywhere round your vicinity which would provide me the excuse and oppty for a visit… Any impostors, or people with incredibly long beards, or ones who believe in the imminent end of the world, or are reincarnations or keep lions in their living room or embalmed bodies or even skeletons, or have developed some especial skill like a lady in Florida who is meant to eat and sleep underwater, or affect some remarkable costume or other, or collect things to the point of miserliness? Don’t trouble about it, or bother to answer, unless when you look up from the page the Messiah comes wandering out of the woods…
Letter to Howard Nemerov, her brother, 1960

One summer I worked a lot in Washington Square Park... The park was divided. It has these walks, sort of like a sunburst, and there were these territories staked out. There were young hippie junkies down one row. There were lesbians down another, really tough amazingly hard-core lesbians. And in the middle were winos. They were like the first echelon and the girls who came from the Bronx to become hippies would have to sleep with the winos to get to sit on the other part with the junkie hippies... I got to know a few of them. I hung around a lot. They were a lot like sculptures in a funny way. I was very keen to get close to them, so I had to ask to photograph them. You can’t get that close to somebody and not say a word, although I have done that.
from Diane Arbus, Aperture, 1972

I was riding my bicycle on Third Avenue and she was with a friend of hers. They were enormous, both of them, almost six feet tall, and fat. I thought they were big lesbians. They went into a diner and I followed them and asked if I could photograph them. They said, “Yes, tomorrow morning.” Subsequently they were apparently arrested and spent the night in jail being booked. So the next morning I got to their house around 11… The first thing they said was, “I think we should tell you” – I don’t know why they felt so obligated – “we’re men.”
from Diane Arbus, Aperture, 1972

On life
I suppose freedom is a bit eerie. It’s what I want but something in me tries to pretend I can’t. And there is so much work to working that there are moments, moments, where I stop and look around and it seems too arduous to go on. It isn’t of course. But that is why people have jobs and pay checks... it helps keep you from unanswerable questions.
Letter to her friend Carlotta Marshall, circa November 1969

I used to think consciousness itself was a virtue, so I tried to keep it all in my head at the same time; past, future etc. Tried even to feel the bad when I felt good and vice versa as if any unawareness was a Marie-Antoinette sort of sin. It’s like throwing ballast overboard to only do what there is to do NOW. A kind of confidence that later will bring its own now… It makes Sunday more Sunday and even Monday is better…
Letter to ex husband Allan Arbus, 1971

(By the way - I know underknown is not an English word, but I need its meaning – underknown says a lot).