Tag: apples

Tono Stano – Gift (1999)

Like much of Stano’s work, I am, at first, not certain how to engage with this photograph: it’s stunning–both in the sense of the reflection of sunlight off a moving vehicle that unexpectedly blinds you as well as incurring a coup de grace.

That’s probably not such a bad starting point, actually. (First idea, best idea–and all that.) There is something impossible about the light in the above: the over exposure along the ridge of your back, the flattering dynamic range of gradients on her face. (There’s almost certainly some sort of wizard-like chicanery with bounce boards going on just beyond the frame edge.)

After the initial wow-ness of seeing it, I naturally think woman with apples and start running with the biblical Eve mythos. On the surface, I feel that’s a super hackneyed premise. I’m inclined to accuse the artist of a lack of subtlety, when I should probably equally blame myself for the ease with which I trot down that well-worn path.

However, I don’t think it’s the wrong path. Here the woman is looking at something on the ground with both gravity and curiosity. The viewer might very much be intended to make this sort of subconscious connection. The three apples (instead of the usual one associated with the trope), suggests a fascination with the potential of knowing of good and evil (and from a theological standpoint: embracing of sin).

The more I look at this the more I’ve convinced that the allusions to Eve actually serve a recursive purpose, to present the surrender to temptation with nothing more than an implicit tempter.

Everything else points to a rapturous celebration of the sensuous pleasure of being human, alive and therefore physically embodied. (Also, from the standpoint of compositional form: not how the parabola of her rounded back opposes the inverse parabola of the grass behind her and how her shape and order contrast with the blurry chaos of vegetation; and how the dark background in the upper 40% of the frame makes her stand out more–conceptually suggesting that between chaos and nothing, there is humanity and it’s potential of sensuous experience.)

Source: sir-j

Alena Zhandarova – Evita Goze (2011)

I’m reblogging this from mpdrolet–who if you follow me, you seriously ought to follow; he curates what hands down the best Tumblr blog. (Not to mention: and he’s forgotten more about fine art photography than I’ll ever know.)

It’s odd though because while he’s usually fastidious with sourcing; when he posted this image, he attributed it solely to Goze, linking to modeling work Goze did for Aiga Ozolina.

It’s absolutely worth the time to click through and check out all parties involved. (Especially consider the impact the collaboration with Goze has on the respective image makers codified styles.)

I’m not interested in comment on that, however–mostly because there is something about this image with which I am utterly enamored.

It reminds me of Martin Buber’s I and Thou wherein it’s postulated that their are two modes of relationships in the world–the relationship between a subject and objects (termed I-It) and the experience of transcendent, non-duality (termed I-Thou).

I-It, for example, involves a subject perceiving an object–Molly looking at a painting in a gallery, Dev reading the subway map, etc. I-Thou, on the other hand, like a gust of wind, wrenching open your window and a macaw flying into the room; you are so startled by the sudden and unexpected presence that for a moment you forget to resort to language in the instinctive drive to sort and identify situations; you experience an unmediated fullness of awe in the moment. (This is an example–you can certainly experience I-Thou moments looking at a painting in a gallery. Hell, I wouldn’t be alive if not for that possibility.)

Buber maintains that the spark of the I-Thou moment lies encased–not unlike an insect in amber–within the I-It moment that litter our lives.

* * *

As an off-the-charts introvert, I need a metric fuck ton of solitude in order to even halfway function as a human being. Yet, I do need a modicum of social stimulation–just not in a small talk/how about this weather/interacting with strangers at a loud bar; I need to feel connected to others.

One of my pressing struggles in my life is balancing the need for some sort of connectedness with the fact that I really only have recourse to more casual and frivolous interactions.

Imagine that we are standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean. I am standing facing you and your back is to the sun dipping towards the horizon’s shelf. Something in the color or the vista speaks to me, I enter into an I-Thou moment. All I can do–without slipping out of the moment–is instinctively point. Either you’ll see it and share the moment or you wont. Even if I could explain, the explanation would be a little like explaining a joke–that which was humorous is rendered sterile via translation.

* * *

I want to share the I-Thou spark that flickers just below the surface of this image. Don’t you see it? It’s staggering…

if you don’t the only thing I can suggest is to remind you of the scene in Klimov’s masterpiece Иди и смотри (probably one of my three favorite films of all time) where Florya shakes water from the trees and dances with Glasha in the rain?

Don’t you see it? Look. It’s right there…