Architect: Renzo Piano: Building: KPN Tower: Rotterdam
Truthful Fiction
There is a woman who gestures towards me every night: The city stands alone- -I see: The woman leans like a 1940s starlet in dressed in ready: She the poseur slightly wisps in the lights: Every night silhouetted across, against and over the many metropolises’ sky line- -she awaits- -her poses- - remain the same; Her shadowy frame only heard in shadowy reverberations - -she is there:
Again and again the night brings her into my camera my camera to her: I have a friend in the darkness of the night- - the light before the morning. Every night; The shadow as it will, moves:
The words remain the same- -“walk with me” I imagine. “Take a look at my city if you trust- -you must” I imagine. “I extend a promise to see”. I imagine every night.
What happens when no one is around to hear what you see- -to see what you hear?
What happens when you realize what you are imagining is not an imagination.
New York City: Grand Central
I often ask my camera to remember Joan Didion- - often I do: I am in this moment reminded of her sitting atop the hood of her grandfathers pick-up truck: When she shared the story in the midst of our portrait session- - I realized maybe thirty years set our lives apart- -more than thirty years apart: We watched as she recounted: The rattlesnake was killed instantly: The jolt of the idea of a blast from the past made me wince: Joan didn’t flinch- -she always remembered- -as well…Joan gestured to my mind. I wanted to see what she wanted me to see. There are things in the lights of days then and now: They remain with you in mind and sight of mind.
I have had one dream and some more: My camera waits for the new unidentified wildernesses to arise alive. The wilderness where and when my camera captures something new to share- - within my future’s past:
Discovering a voice to make captures is easy: Discovering my own voice is when the science of imagination begins- -like the great Satchmo singing Mack the Knife- -The unimaginable appears in mind and sight, sight of mind. The communion of imaginary thoughts will one day locate into memory- -then possibly near the end, a slow fade from the mind.
I camera begins anew and again anew: The days and years pass- -not a second redacted: The goal was never to invent a new way or manner of photography: The historical emotional daily narrative stands before me today and beyond: Thee of time and light need to be explored with every aperture idea: Time and again the “…Space Odyssey…” that is Kubrick’s beckons my eyes as Didion’s rattlesnake beckons my desires: New to be born babies flying through space- -takes its course- -The iconic ape wielding and tossing a giant femur into time travel: Floating before an orchestra of stars the bone as baton conducts our eyes:
Rotterdam
The litany matters: Footprints afoot: Rare and exotic theories about the origins of camera sightings remind- -Hannibals Carthaginians’ crossing the Alps atop elephants: The elephants on tippy toes espy the descent from the highest peaks- -Their eyes nearly two inches wide frightened to the core bellowing “Not I”: Naturalists’ William Henry Hudson writes with truthful imaginations about the voices he may have heard- -His assiduous study’s of plants or animals seemingly conversing in real time: May they only speak to him- -though it is us who captures in sight the voluminous possibilities. My white elephants (Hemingways’ but so close to my heart) shed their fears on hills with shadows: Plain light exposed is never enough: So it is with that I stand in front of erected metropolises sharing what the cameras’ eyes say upon discovery, discoveries of what needs to be seen and seen again.
Can it be the exquisite burning skin aroused in the burning barren desert that the adventurer, discoverer Stanislaw d’Escayrac de Lauture’s awakened in his travels alone in the Sudan desert.
Can it be the cameras’ magical incantations that we might share with d’Escayrac de Lauture as the heat swelters the mind descends and equally ascends into imaginaries.
Let’s take one more glimpse of Victor Hugos’ castles- -Waimeas’ thunderous waves- -Albrecht Dürer’ search for the unfathomable whale and we might catch a glimpse of the camera’s life.
Think of this past within all the known written and visual context. My camera allows only for a single frame and what may follow- -A minor afterburn. Maybe the camera looks back in the moment: Maybe the camera remembers: Maybe things we have seen remain alive in our thoughts.
Rotterdam Central Train Station