Photographs …a way of giving information to people who do not take easily to reading. In a world ruled by photographic images, all borders (“framing”) seem arbitrary. Anything can be separated, can be made discontinuous, from everything else: all that is necessary is to frame the subject differently. Photography reinforces a nominalist view of…
Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato’s cave, still recycling, it’s age-old habit, in mere images of truth. But being educated by photographs is not like being educated by older, more artisanal images. For one thing, there are a great more images around, claiming our attention. The inventory started in 1839 and since then about everything…
I remember the one of my first occasions to hold a camera in my hands. I was a teenager. I borrowed my fathers Kodak box camera, a black and white film camera with a fixed shutter speed of 1/30th of a second. The camera was little more than a black box, postage stamp-sized viewfinder,…
Nearly a week has passed since my return from the West. I revisited in my mind our hike to the site of the old silver mine, the abandoned Stockton Hills Mine. “Stockton the liveliest mining camp in Mohave county” is written in the old records of the area. The mines played out, as did…
A hard, cold rain is falling. I know that it’s spring. The days will grow longer and warmer, as sure as the axis of the earth inclines the northern hemisphere incrementally toward the sun. Nature is reliable, a human concept. “Reliable” is a euphemism for inexorable cause and effect. Sometimes I take comfort in…
II There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing, No end to the withering of withered flowers, To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless, To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage, The bone’s prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable Prayer of the one…
The second day has passed after concluding two weeks of adventure out west. I was introduced to a few of the individuals who have a enduring love for carved carousel animals, some collectors, others conservators and painters, and a master class carver. The hospitality will be long remembered. I was invited to studios, where…
Two weeks traveling with a friend to the west, – from Illinois, to Missouri, to Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The occasion for the trip was a book which my friend plans to write, a definitive book about the history and importance of carousel animals for American culture. I felt lucky to…
At last I have seen Beverly Hills. Visiting was not on my bucket list of places, but I have been aware for much of my life that movie stars and other entertainers live in Beverly Hills. Beverly Hills is storied for it’s luxurious shopping, for the glitz and glamor cultivated by those who are…
“But, friend, when you know certain things: these things lead to dispassion not to passion; to detachment not to bondage; to diminution not to accumulation; to having few wishes, not to having many wishes; to contentment not to discontent; to seclusion not to gregariousness; to the arousing of energy, not to indolence; to frugality…
