Broom (13)

BROOM (13)

I was stood on a stool with my new feather-duster, detaching old cobwebs with what power I could muster when the one with the hoola-hoop swooped into sight, gyrating those hips with immense speed and might.

She said:

'You know those old photos of French boulevards; the ones where you really do have to squint hard? The ones that took ever so long to expose; so long that one wouldn't be wrong to suppose that Parisian roads - nay, all capital streets - were devoid of life; yea, untrodden by feet?'

I tried to look cool but, I have to admit, I've a deep-seated loathing of all arachnids.

'Yes. You know about Talbot and that French guy - Daguerre? The first to go public; the first who would dare to suggest they could turn three dimensions into two . . . '

The sight of a spider got me all of ado.

'Well, I often retreat to the fire escape, for a smoke and a think and a bit of a break. . .

'CCTV's always interested me but, now I can see, that my own institution's got its eye trained on me. It's installed an old camera: a pin-hole, in fact.  (Made out of a beer can and some sticky black tape.) My fear: though the camera is less than precise (and it takes several months for the pic to take shape) is that, despite long exposures removing all trace of the people who pass at a brisk walking pace, I am - regular - sat on the stairs . . .

'Now, won't it be awful if after six months, a latent image has registered me sat, all hunched-up? The untrained observer might wrongly deduce that I'm under-employed, and at a loose-end when, in fact (for the record) I actually spend more time than I paid for at work.'

Nescio (23)

NESCIO (23)

The priestess recovered, rose with the sun.

She knew she must finish what she'd begun.

Now, then.

The sister was happy: apparently complete.

The brother's contentment would yet prove a feat.

The priestess soon found herself back on the street.

Looking for signs . . .

The priestess' feet were blistered and sore.

She remained unconvinced she could take traipsing much more.

The street had become increasingly confusing.

The priestess blamed this on photographic modernism.

Of course, she endorsed Graham Clarke's reading, but the fact was Friedlander had made sign-reading bemusing.

Reflections were hampering her success.

The Sub-Editor - The Origins Of Photography In Limericks

THE ORIGINS OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN LIMERICKS

There was a young man called Daguerre

Who had talent, charisma and flair.

With a sensitised plate

He recorded the great

As they sat in his studio chair.

A competitor?

Well, that made Talbot sit up and think.
(He'd long tired of paper and ink.)
Photogenic drawing was taxing
His calotype needed waxing
But, at least, it produced lots of prints.

So, thank God for Frederick Scott Archer

Who cared little for patents or barter.

His wet-collodion on glass

Freed photography, at last.

He died in poverty: the fate of a martyr.

I am waiting for the next batch of proofs to correct. Proofs I re-wrote and, now, need to be re-edited - as soon as the authors return them to me.

Semiotics Of Photography: P

P is for Perfect (Company)

Pizza Express (Falmouth)

Semiotics Of Photography: M

M is for Moon

Since the beginnings of photography photographers have photographed the moon; photographed at night and by moonlight.

Man on the moon.
Dark side of the moon.
Moonstruck

Blue moon.
(Athens, Georgia, 2002)

Semiotics Of Photography: K

K is for Klein (Yves Klein's Leap into the Void, 1960)

A leap into the void.

A year later - the year before he died - Klein masterminded another brilliant stunt: Blue Monochrome (1961).

According to the MoMA website (http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80103) 'Klein likened monochrome painting to an 'open window to freedom'. He worked with a chemist to develop his own particular brand of blue. Made from pure color pigment and a binding medium, it is called International Klein Blue. Klein adopted this hue as a means of evoking the immateriality and boundlessness of his own particular utopian vision of the world.'

Blue: the hue of freedom and immateriality. Rebecca Solnit is Klein's true successor with her beautiful philosophical memoir A Field Guide To Getting Lost (2005).

From her chapter, 'The Blue of Distance':

'For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of emotion, the color of solitude and desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. The color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains.' (pp29-30)

Semiotics Of Photography: J

J is for Jane

Holding on, however absurd.

Semiotics Of Photography: G

G is for Greg Lucas Connects

The most original and erudite commentary on photography I know. Free-thinking, free-wheeling.

http://greg-lucas.blogspot.co.uk

Semiotics Of Photography: F

F is for Fish (and Photography)

I maintain there remains a place in the multiple, myriad histories of photography for a history of fishing, fish and photography. . .

Image from M Haworth-Booth, 1997, Photography: An Independent Art, London: V&A Publishing, p56. (Royal Engineers US/Canada Border Survey, Columbia River Salmon Caught at Kettle Falls, 1860-1.)

Semiotics Of Photography: E

E is for Education (A Photographic Education)

Image taken from Marina Warner, 'Parlour Made', Creative Camera, Vol 315, April/May 1992 pp28-32
(Kate E Gough Album, V&A Collection)


Originally inspired by an enlightened ideal (art for art's sake), it was latterly hijacked by career aspirants.

Semiotics Of Photography: D

D is for Darkroom

A place for development, transgression, alchemy.

The analogue photographer's final sanctuary.
(Until our Alma Mater, the University, dismantled it.)

Image from (ed) Jay, B (1994) Some Rollicking Bull: Light Verse, and Worse, on Victorian Photography, Germany: Nazraeli Press

Semiotics Of Photography: B

B is for Barthes (Roland Barthes)

Image: R, Barthes, 1997, Roland Barthes By Roland Barthes, California: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Inc

Roland Barthes:  lecturing distressed him, panels and boards bored him.

How can you not admire or love him?

Semiotics Of Photography: A

A is for Archive

Derrida and dust.

The 180 Degrees Project (4)

Being Isn't Always Believing

Take the Countess of Castiglione. She knew a thing or two about photography: the power of the image. Famously, she manipulated portraits of herself in later years to appear more svelte and nubile than her middle-age spread allowed. A nineteenth-century kind of 'nip and tuck'; a Prima Donna of celebrity imaging,  pre-Madonna.

According to Malcolm Daniel, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:

'Toward the end of her life, following a hiatus of some twenty-five years, the Countess di Castiglione resumed her sessions with [the photographer Pierre-Louis] Pierson. The pictures reveal her mental instability and loss of all critical sense'. (http://www.metmuseum.org)

Or more simply(sympathetically) . . .

This woman's world had been turned upside down: circumstances out of her control.

It takes some time, some doing - a lot of being without really believing in it - to regain one's perspective on life.

Guest Lecture

I conceded, ultimately.
Gave the lecture.
Told what Barthes had said
About photographic portraiture.

'The portrait-photograph is a closed field of forces. Four image-repertoires intersect here, oppose and distort each other. In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art.' (Barthes, R, 1982, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, London: Jonathan Cape, 13)

A bit like life, really. Only, life is mostly artless. . .

The class didn't last long.

Image from (ed) Jay, B (1994) Some Rollicking Bull: Light Verse, and Worse, on Victorian Photography, Germany: Nazraeli Press

After William Henry Fox Talbot's 'The Open Door' (1844)

Consider this
Something of a mystery;
I've just been invited
To teach photo-history.

The invite was really
Terribly formal.
Polite: a far cry
From the cursory normal.

But, it's just for a day,
And, they're happy to pay
To hear what it is
That I might have to say

On Roland Barthes.

Mais, oui. C'est vrai.

My own place of work
Would like to conjecture
If I'd care to give
A theory guest-lecture.

Of course, I declined.
It no longer seems right.
To remove
The dark-cloth;
Come into the light.

To move
From the dark-room
Into the sun. Forget
Camera Lucida
It's over. I'm done.

Heliotherapy failed;
The shadows are cast.
While in pursuit of
The punctum,
I got lost in the past.

Images from:  Sale, C (1959) The Specialist, London: Putnam & Co Ltd

Under The Cloak, Or, Some Rollicking Old Bull

'Alchemy, black magic, top hat and a white rabbit. Oh, and some smoke, just for effect. I'm now
5 X 4 lecturer-elect.'

'Really?'

'Yes, the birdie whispered in my ear. It's that time of year; was loath to hear my schedule for the Autumn semester. Do the brains of our leaders whither and fester?  The decisions that they've made . . . let me call a spade a spade. We're no longer subject specialists, we're just Jacks-of-all-Trade.'

'But . . .'

'Indeed! I believed that I was qualified and employed to teach the theory, but it seems I'm now obliged to demonstrate large-format photography. I suggested to my manager that this felt like an affront; turns the order of things upside-down and also back-to-front. I opined it was short-sighted but it didn't take her long to explain my vision lacked clear sight, because my aperture was wrong.'

'Please come out from under the dark-cloth.'

'So, she took me to the darkroom; the visionary leading the blind. I thought I could smell chemicals, but was damned if I could find the light switch to the cubicle where a print lay in a tray. I was feeling claustrophobic, and had turned a shade of grey. I started to explain that I lacked the constitution for working in the dark when (in my myopic confusion) it dawned on me that this might be a form of prostitution. The lurid glow from the safety light did nought for my complexion.'

'You need a north-facing studio at your age.'

'But, my cries - they went unheeded.  For, the seed is 'ready seeded. Photo-history, it's not needed, but I have to have a use. So they're tightening the noose. I can play their game, and all is fine. Or, dig my heels in and bide my time.'

'Hang on.'

'I will. But for now and, please, forgive me if I'm sounding like a bore, but can anybody tell me what this dark-slide might be for?'

Images from (ed) Jay, B (1994) Some Rollicking Bull: Light Verse, and Worse, on Victorian Photography, Germany: Nazraeli Press

The Golden Age Of Photogenic Style: How To Lob A Soft Ball When Dressed As A Snowball

How To Demonstrate You're A Jolly Good S(p)ort And Secure Yourself A Man (Providing There Are Enough Of Them To Go Round)