Frost

Shards of green pierce the white
With a cry that dents the stillness
Not everything goes without a fight
And some gain sight in blindness
Hope Spring Eternal

Winter

Je ne parlerai pas, je ne penserai à rien:
Mais l'amour infini me montera dans l'âme,
Et j'irai loin, bien loin, comme un bohémien,
Par la nature, - heureux comme avec une femme.
~ Arthur Rimbaud

Snow

No whiteness lost is so white
as the memory of whiteness

Peek

I've always wondered what an empty room looked like.
Devoid of any human presence; not even the lightest gaze.
Will it be different from what we perceive?

Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.

Grey

Snow through my window

There's nothing spectacular about this photo, its just another Danish winter morning. One of the many "just another" that is now so remote from my life. I miss the seasons. I always seek comfort in the past, even cold winter mornings are comforting in the glow of hindsight. I wish I could reach through the window and touch the snow once more, to remember how it is like to be carefree again; to live life like a snow flake, falling wherever the wind takes you. But snowflakes never last. And so perhaps it is our obligations and responsibilities that keep us grounded, yet alive. Is this the price of freedom or the cost of life.

Light

Midway passageway, to the light.

I'm drawn to the light like a moth to the flame,
I don't know if you are the same.
Each day I hope you come my way,
Only to find my wait in vain.

Mirror

A true reflection

Manet in commenting on Bar at the Folies-Bergere said,

"Everything is mere appearance, the pleasure of a passing hour, a midsummer night's dream. Only painting, the reflection of a reflection - but the reflection, too of eternity - can record some of the glitter of this mirage..."

Manet's painting, which was inspired by Velazquez's Las Meninas, in turn served as inspiration for Jeff Wall's Picture for Woman. Art inspires art and to a certain extent good art is the combination of innovation and imitation. Retracing the reflection, back to its origin seems to suggest that there must be only one starting point; A true reflection?

Schadenfreude

Human Noir

It is everywhere, Black Humour. Diabolic humour and the grotesque are very close to each other. Mikhail Bakhtin often talks about the suppressed laughter in modern culture. Things can be laughed about but not openly; the fact that the laughter is not open gives it a sinister, neurotic, bitter and ironic quality. A kind of mannerist laughter. I know that there is a kind of suppressed laughter running through my photos, even though I am not sure when things are funny. Perhaps something that I call Human noir. But this is not the same as the comic, although it includes the comic; it can be present even when nobody seems to be laughing.

Placemat

Odd shapes of different sizes, coexisting in a defined space

In Situ. We all should know our place in life. Having everything where it belongs does provide a sense of order. But being put in place for so long does unsettles. To move the coffee cup or the bread knife? That is the question. For the reasoning behind that is perhaps the same reasoning behind why everything was put in its place to begin with.

Cents

A tub of nostalgia

The Truth was forsaken for 30 pieces of silver.
Nostalgia readily available at 40 cents a pop.
Instant gratification at 60 cents a pack.
Contentment achieved through monthly installments.
Will we ever determine the true value of things?

Music

Chilling with Chet

After a long week,
chilling to good music.
I recall,
'It is not a sin to get lost
You should lose your way
Just be sure to find the way back'
Even taken out of context,
these words still hold true.
Even when context is everything.

Gate

Close the gate

An open gate leads from light into darkness. The dark has always been symbolic of doubt and uncertainty whilst the light reveals certainty. I like this photo because it is clear what the light reveals. Here, the line that has always been symbolic of reliability, that has and perhaps still is the bedrock of modern constructions of all forms, is portrayed in a scene of disarray. It reveals the straight line as disjointed, straight lines that are broken and fused together, at right angles at wrong angles. Straight lines that have been disrupted, for the sake of support. Straight lines that try to frame but only do so partially, surrendering the remainder to the dark. Suddenly, the darkness seems more certain than before; exuding a certain sense of calm, of uniformity, of order. The open gate beckons, step up and close it behind you.

Reflections

Overpass, Stockholm

I finally found the time to finish off the Jeff Wall book after a series of distractions. There was a passage by Jean-Francois Chevrier which just about summed up my views on Jeff Wall's works:

"Untitled, Underpass, confirms that for the painter of modern life, people are not necessarily characters. The anonymous crowd is a physical and dynamic quality of the urban landscape. The representation of modern life is first of all a matter of topographical figuration; pure landscape. Yet a question remains. People cross an overpass. It's clear, as cutting as architecture, bright like the daylight. But beneath the footbridge there might be anything, just as one does not know where these people came from, or where they will go. Everything in the picture is perfectly visible, yet the invisible is there, beneath the bridge, behind the image."

Jeff Wall cites many painters as inspiration but seems to have left out Hopper, even though there is a Hopper like quality in his photos. They are scenes of everyday, but ordinary to the point of challenging our preconceived notions of the everyday. There is a current lurking beneath the calm surface, like how still water runs deep. And so perhaps the truth about life lies in its reflection, not in the smooth veneer which we call the everyday.

Packed

All packed and waiting to go.

There is a sense of potency in this photo, almost as if something was or should happen. Even the title of the post is in the past tense, suggesting that any action has already taken place but not that any tension has past. In fact, the contrary is true. To a large extent, any picture of modern life stages the ambivalence of pacified tensions and conflicts. Situations of constraint and apparently inescapable alienation, waiting to be liberated, to explode.