Tag: forest photography

• Photo diary: Cézanne and tracing appearances as they emerge

  

  Scarborough, Maine, August 16, 2024

  Where in the past I may have erased construction sites—orange cones, yellow bulldozers, exposed concrete—from my vision, for the last few years I’m usually drawn to these happenings, even find them beautiful. The reality is that this is how everything (modern) we know is constructed, and there is a freshness to feeling that reality, even if there is also a sense of loss.

  In sound, or in photos, tracing or creating the world as it emerges is a preoccupation I have. I’m deeply reverent about Merleau-Ponty’s essay on Cézanne, called “Cézanne’s Doubt.” He discusses this sensation of seeing appearances as they are at the beginning of the world—which for Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology is a perceptual world, I suppose. But he also alludes to an actual, chronological beginning of the animal world. Cézanne’s work apparently shows this, and this is partially why there is such eerie “non-humanity” to his paintings. I relate to this non-humanity, and I feel anger about humans’ habit (a natural behavior) of focusing on each other. It’s a matter of seeing more broadly, including humans in the landscape rather than making them ideal protagonists.

  2025.01.12

• Melody turns us from the environment: thoughts on texture

  

  Dry grass. I told my housemate in Orléans, France that I liked fibrous foods, that I almost long to chew on a thick piece of rope. She told me I may have something from childhood.

  Playing guitar tonight, I was thinking about texture. After twenty minutes of exploring, listening, and responding to the strings, I looked up. The couch was vivid, green, and almost resonating with a visual timbre. The yellow light from the lamp bounced around dully.

  In music—or stories—melodies themselves can have texture, but more often they are surrounded by it. Precise colors and weights move on the surface of melodies and the notes are the music’s interior, like thoughts or spirit. But looking up at the couch tonight, my sensitivity to texture is high and I question melodies.

  Melodies, or concepts like “couch,” can intertwine with textures, but more often they distract from them. Melodies distract from the environment with airs of ready meaning. Like looking into the woods and suddenly noticing a moving animal crossing a scene, our minds follow stories, motion, and any other sign of significance. I’m interested in heightening more of the environment, so that textures are as important as notes, or words, or s-o-n-g. As foregrounded as any spirit that dwells inside. Surfaces should be as ready as ideas.

  I’ve looked at the woods many times, raised a camera, and hoped to catch the depth of the melody. It’s unlikely to happen, usually, because the woods is so noisy. The melody, poem, song—whatever I thought I saw is obscured. This photo from the summer, nearby, catches depth. Whether it captures melody or not, you determine. But I think it catches surfaces.

  2024.12.09