Category: reflections
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beijing blur
If Miroslav Tichý had visited Beijing in April 2012 this is what his cameras might have recorded. (last 2 photos here are Shanghai)
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tina modotti + me
Photo at lower right is of Tina Modotti, by Edward Weston. In 1865, young Lewis Payne tried to assassinate Secretary of State W. H. Seward. Alexander Gardner photographed him in his cell, where he was waiting to be hanged. The photograph is handsome, as is the boy: that is the studium. But the punctum is:…
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encounters/annie ernaux
Notre vrai moi n’ est pas tout entier en nous. Jean-Jacques Rousseau These photographs were all shot at the exhibition “Exteriors: Annie Ernaux and Photography,” at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, February–May 2024, curated by Lou Stoppard. I love both Ernaux’ writing and the kind of street photography represented in the show, and…
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Brick Lane, 2024 #2 (if I must die …)
Whenever we are in London (where I was born) we try to visit Brick Lane in Whitechapel, an area we have watched gentrifying over the years with mixed feelings. But so far, the ever-changing graffiti remains a reliable constant. All images shot 6-8 May, 2024
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unexpected encounters #13: sun throat cut
The body will continue to demonstrate mortality as the fate of all humans. It is for this reason that any reference to human animality gravely affects those who dream of its antithesis. They take offence not only at any mention of animality in life, but in science, literature, and the arts as well, as this…
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unexpected encounters #12: road trip journal
The truth is that in this house with its four walls of glass I feel … always on alert. I am always restless. Even in the evening. I feel like a sentinel on guard day and night. I can rarely stretch out and relax … Edith Farnsworth, quoted on panel at Farnsworth House [Sally] Hemings’…
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unexpected encounters #3—self-portraits with Cindy Sherman
Je est un autre. Arthur Rimbaud, letter to Georges Izambard, 13 May 1871 3.1 peeping tom. Berlin, March 15, 2016 The stills are dense with suspense and danger, and they all look as if they were directed by Hitchcock. The invariant subject is The Girl in Trouble, even if The Girl herself does not always know it. In Barbie-doll…
Camera lucida 