O'Sullivan's Saloon

Revisiting the American Project, Once Again

[vispoetica-blog]

[womanhouse]

New York Times: A Radically Prosaic Approach to Civil Rights Images

“Not all of the ‘Segregation’ photographs are as prosaic as the Thornton portrait. Some are ominous and intense, providing stark evidence of the unjustness of segregation and the ways it endangered democracy: the ‘colored only’ signs that marginalized one community as assuredly as they enriched another; the backbreaking labor; the squalor and overcrowding; and the unequal, ramshackle accommodations.

But most of the images are optimistic and affirmative, like the portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Thornton. They focus on the family’s everyday activities, and their resolve to get on with their lives as normally as possible, in spite of an environment that restricts and intimidates…”

….

“It is the very fullness, even ordinariness, of the lives of the Thornton family that most effectively contests these notions of difference, which had flourished in a popular culture that offered no more than an incomplete or distorted view of African-American life.”

[o-sullivan-blog]

I recently had the good fortune of attending a course in narrative portraiture with Greg Miller (http://www.gregmiller.com/).  I'll write more about Greg in coming months -- in particular, his approach to portraiture, to a life lived in photography, and to places of community in America -- but for now let me just say that he opened my eyes to the storytelling potential of single images.  I couldn't help but think of Greg when I saw the Gordon Parks images.  

These segregation images are worthy of sustained attention, both for their formal qualities and for their historical/present-day resonance.

[littlebrownmushroom]

“The direction of many of us will be more toward poetry than toward the traditional novel. The problem for such a novelist will be to know how far he can distort without destroying, and in order not to destroy, he will have to descend far enough into himself to reach those underground springs that...

[o-sullivan-blog]

One more thought!

"It is a happy thing to remember that one never works alone."  - Paul Strand, Photographer's Forward, Time in New England

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Robert Adams, writing in Why People Photograph, described this photo, the last in Strand's book, as among the best architectural photos ever made. Adams was astounded by the risks Strand took in the book.

[o-sullivan-blog]

Paul Strand, July 4, beginnings

Photo books - again, how to begin?  Following, Paul Strand, Time in New England. 

--

The juxtaposition here in 2012 of Winthrop's aspiration with Strand's photo of arrival strains against the arc of history.

--

(I searched online without success for the second photo, "Rock, 1927", of the three that comprise the first section of Strand's book. Below, two inadequate pics.)

--

"I. NEW WORLD

ABOARD THE ARBELLA, 

approaching New England, 1630

FOR THIS END we must be knit together as  one man. We must entertain each other in  brotherly affection. We must be willing to  abridge ourselves of our superfluities for the  supply of others' necessities. We must delight  in each other; make others' conditions our own;  rejoice together, mourn together, labor and  suffer together, as members of the same body.  So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the  bond of peace.

The Lord will be our God, and delight to  dwell among us as His own people; when He  shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall  say of succeeding plantations, 'The Lord make  it likely that of New England.'

For we must consider that we shall be as a city  upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.

JOHN WINTHROP

A Model of Christian Charity, 1630."

[carrielizabethompson]

[o-sullivan-blog]

In recent days, long with work and absent time for being with photos, I enjoy every evening Carrie Elizabeth Thompson's ten photos.  As Alec Soth describes: "Carrie has taken on the ambitious task of posting 10 pictures a day of her life as an artist/mother. For those of us who struggle to be alert to the beauty, mystery and complexity of everyday life, Carrie’s blog is an eye opener. Go here: http://carrielizabethompson.tumblr.com/

For me, Ms. Thompson's daily practice accomplishes two vital things:

i. Her daily intent provides context for the act of viewing.  I encounter hundreds - thousands - of beautiful, formally astute, complex or ecstatic photos online, but struggle to engage them.  In this image saturated environment, I find I need a scaffolding -- a project, a narrative, an emotive journey -- to find my way amid the image clutter.  In Ms. Thompson's work, we have the beautiful quotidian struggle for beauty and vision.

ii. Ms. Thompson's daily practice inspires me to remain present and sensate to the world. Curiously, my camera is a crutch against solipsism, narcissism, and rank instrumentalism.

In the photo above, we find Ms. Thompson acutely aware of photo history. Below, Walker Evans.

Penny Picture Display, Savannah, Georgia.. 1936.  By Walker Evans.

License Photo Studio, New York, 1934 Walker Evans (American, 1903–1975) Gelatin silver print

[systermans]

Wim has some serious arguments about film vs digital.

[o-sullivan-blog]

Wim Wenders - on the photographer's relation to things, time

[o-sullivan-blog]

why we photograph (or, a joyful pic after a sad day)

"Your own photography is never enough. Every photographer who has lasted has depended on other people's pictures too -- photographs that may be public or private, serious or funny, but that carry with them a reminder of community.

"Nicholas Nixon made one that I especially treasure of our Airedale. It is a perfect record of her intense gaze, and was included in a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, although I prize it as much for the recollection it affords of first meeting the photographer. The dog head barged ahead at our front door, and when Nick saw her through the screen his delight was so undisguised that Kerstin and I and then he started laughing; in the confusion he gave up on words, but managed to find in his billfold a snapshot of himself as a child with an Airedale. All of which -- the dog, Nick's enjoyment of the moment, his sense of humor, his gift as a photographer -- returns to me now as I look at the picture that eventually made that day."

-- Robert Adams

Nicholas Nixon, Fred, 1975

[o-sullivan-blog]

two photos and a poem

Merlin

by Geoffrey Hill

I will consider the outnumbering dead:  For they are the husks of what was rich seed.  Now, should they come together to be fed,  They would outstrip the locusts' covering tide. Arthur, Elaine, Mordred; they are all gone  Among the raftered galleries of bone. 

By the long barrows of Logres they are made one,  And over their city stands the pinnacled corn. 

1. Sally Mann, from the series Last Measure, 2000-2003. Mann visited the battle sites of the Civil War -- Antietam, Manassas, Wilderness, Fredericksburg -- and used the collodion process of Brady, Gardner, O'Sullivan, etc.

2. Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, 1932.

[o-sullivan-blog]

How to begin a photo book?

Robert Frank, Plate 1 from The Americans, Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey.

Here, two people, one face obscured by shadow, unsmiling, perhaps anxious, one lost entirely, decapitated, by a billowing American flag, itself cropped and partial. The subjects look out; the photographer looks in.

The brick is grimy. We understand from Frank's caption that there is parade. Jingoism occludes what seems a grim reality.

From this beginning, it's easy to understand how Frank's work was viewed as subversive and cynical or, more generously, a critical reflection.

What at first seems a lousy photo is, as beginning, a rich salvo.

[o-sullivan-blog]

O'Sullivan, Battle of Bull Run, Slaves Fleeing

Timothy O'Sullivan, Fugitive African Americans Fording the Rappahannock River, Rappahannock, Virginia, August 1862.

(Copyprint, Prints and Photographs Division, Reproduction Number: LC-B8171-518 4-4)

This image was taken prior to Emancipation during the second battle of Bull Run (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Bull_Run). The subjects seek freedom behind Union lines.

I don't know how to view this picture. The composition looks rushed.  I can't see the faces of the people.  The people in the background and the individual foreground left look away from the cart, back, at what?  And the cart seems about to collapse under its load.

O'Sullivan was a braggart and apparently spoke with an Irish brogue. One of his cameras was blown up by Confederate shells during the battle. What kind of emotion did the lens mediate? How did the observer and observed exchange regards?

How to view this photo, except very painfully, in light of the great tragedy, Reconstruction, that awaits the hopeful?

More American themes.

[littlebrownmushroom]

I’m spending my summer trying to better understand Summer Nights by Robert Adams. Today I looked at it through the lens of Charles Simic and this poem:

The White Room

by Charles Simic

The obvious is difficult

To prove. Many prefer

The hidden. I did, too.

I listened to the...

[o-sullivan-blog]

Below: Alec Soth reads Robert Adams by way of Charles Simic.  

I think of Soth's own work (his personal projects) as photo poems, often with recurring motifs: the bed in Sleeping by the Mississippi, the pineapple (and historical play and death) in the claustrophic La Belle Dames Sans Merci.  

Can we compose photo books with the patterns of children's songs? Or, more likely, with the deliberate semi-formal, formal, or free verse but still structured stanzas of an old poet? Or the joyful language games of an truly aged poet (the elder Neruda)?

The sequence of images is the decisive aspect of a work - that which calls forth a viewer's experience.  (My father, whose experiences with love and loss are many, said of Soth's sad love poem, Niagara, as he had flipped half-way through: "This is difficult."  His reaction came from the sequencing - it was cumulative.)

Consider these happy techniques of poets in ordering a photo book: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/the-sound-of-a-sentence/

Soth's own post of Simic is about something else, I think: our fundamental relation to the things of the world -- and, yet, again, if we're to see 'things as they are' 'unblinking' 'mute' -- then children are important guides. Who else easily navigates the obvious day?  And then rejoices in the tremulous storytelling night?

[o-sullivan-blog]

Gordon Parks, Muhammad Ali, 1970.  Can we read this photo without hearing Ali taunt Foreman into an unfathomable loss...with language?  Ali understood the image and the word -- and America. 

Gordon Parks, “Muhammad Ali Gives Kids Autographs to Young Fans, Miami, Florida, 1970.” © The Gordon Parks Foundation.

It's the year to celebrate Mr. Parks: http://www.icp.org/museum/exhibitions/gordon-parks-100-years

(And, on Ali, if you haven't seen it, here is When We Were Kings, a must-see portrait of the era, of American culture, black culture, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), the political role of Ali:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfUHYUpmTFs&feature=youtu.be.  This is not a boxing film, though boxers will certainly enjoy it.)

[o-sullivan-blog]

Misty, by Alec Soth, from Niagara, 2005.

Archaic Torso of Apollo, by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Stephen Mitchell)

We cannot know his legendary head

with eyes like ripening fruit.

And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside

like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise

the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could

a smile run through the placid hips and thighs

to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced

beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders

and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself

burst like a star: for here there is no place 

that does not see you.  You must change your life.

http://www.stephenmitchellbooks.com/transAdapt/poetryRilkeExcerpt02.html

[o-sullivan-blog]

Steven B Smith, Washington, Utah 1997 - http://stevesmithphotography.net/the-weather-and-a-place-to-live/#1

And, here, Lewis Baltz, Tract House #15, 1971.  In the George Eastman House.

Is there any other country whose photography is so continuously perturbed by the land?

Are we scarred by the dream of Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt (here, Storm in the Mountains, 1870.)

[o-sullivan-blog]

“Burning House”, Carrie Schneider -- the house appears to be perpetually on fire, from day to night, through all four seasons.

"Schneider built a small 8×6-foot house for each of the images. She then hitched the home to her car, drove it to the lake in Wisconsin, floated it over to the tiny island by canoe, and set it on fire. Over the course of 2 years, the dedicated artist from Chicago built 15 such houses." [From made in Slant - http://www.madeinslant.com/]

Last month, “Burning House” was on exhibit at the Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago. 

[o-sullivan-blog]

Francis Benjamin Johnston, Class in American History, 1899-1900, platinum print, 7.5" x 9.5".

Education - still - who is looking at whom? 

And a foreground of ordered rows.

From MOMA - http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=7851