On photographic intent and the [cosmic] whim of the peripheral

"Curiosity is an oddly ambivalent word that historically has pointed almost as frequently to a condition of ruinous distraction as to a state of intense and productive concentration or to an urge to discover."

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"...the best way to catch sight of a heavenly body is to catch it off guard by looking a little to the side-it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.
An excess of application, in other words, may result paradoxically in a failure of attention, and cure is an oblique curiosity, a faith in peripheral vision."

-Brian Dillon

Attention! Photography and Sidelong Discovery

6.22.2013

A full moon shone,

And around the shrine

Stood devotees

Poised and in place.

-Sappho,  Stung with Love: Poems and Fragments

The theme song of the day was

While I was in Texas

I had the opportunity to photograph two dancers, Hannah and Richie.

(one of which was a principal dancer in the Houston Ballet)

My time spent with them was quietly magical: one of my favorite ways to spend a hot afternoon.

I long to have such a memorial of every being dear to me in the world. It is not merely the likeness 

which is precious in such cases-but the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing

. . . 

the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever! It is the very sanctification of 

portraits I think-and it is not at all monstrous in me to say, what my brothers cry out so vehemently,  

that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest artist's work ever

produced.

-Elizabeth Barrett

(1843, letter to Mary Russell Mitford)

'Identities'

I see the fields the sea wrapped in an equal light

There is no difference

Between the sleeping sand

The axe beside the wound

The body blooming in a sheaf

And the volcano of health

...

I see I read I forget

The open book of my closed blinds

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"...she would have been someone, a very strong personality, even if Picasso had never existed."

Picasso's Weeping Woman: The Life and Art of Dora Maar

I'm preparing for my weekend and leaving you with a big ass photo post