Esse

Czeslaw Milosz

I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro stations flew by; I didn't notice them. What can be done, if our sight lacks absolute power to devour objects ecstatically, in an instant, leaving nothing more than the void of an ideal form, a sign like a hieroglyph simplified from the drawing of an animal or bird? A slightly snub nose, a high brow with sleekly brushed-back hair, the line of the chin - but why isn't the power of sight absolute? - and in a whiteness tinged with pink two sculpted holes, containing a dark, lustrous lava. To absorb that face but to have it simultaneously against the background of all spring boughs, walls, waves, in its weeping, its laughter, moving it back fifteen years, or ahead thirty. To have. It is not even a desire. Like a butterfly, a fish, the stem of a plant, only more mysterious. And so it befell me that after so many attempts at naming the world, I am able only to repeat, harping on one string, the highest, the unique avowal beyond which no power can attain: I am, she is. Shout, blow the trumpets, make thousands-strong marches, leap, rend your clothing, repeating only: is!

She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.

Chris and I had already bought bus tickets for D.C. for a friends opening when he called to tell us about the upcoming blizzard.. living in New York, I guess we've been spoiled by nothing closing due to snow, and decided to go ahead and go. We were at the National Gallery on Friday, when we found out that even though there wasn't any snow on the ground that all the museums, and indeed the government, were closing for the rest of the weekend... so we saw what we could (most importantly the Chardins and Vermeers) and went and ate an amazing lunch that began with perfect raw oysters and ended with apple pie. As it turned out we had a great time playing dominoes with our friends and wandering around the city, which despite my assurances that nothing was going to stick, was indeed covered in a couple of feet of snow the next morning.

I went out when it was snowing hard the first night, with an absurdly heavy camera (RB67, on a grip with a gridded Vivitar strobe mounted on it) and an umbrella. I've been trying to photograph sensations that I've avoided dealing with directly until now.. thinking particularly about the moments that pass when I'm walking somewhere.. not walking with a camera, but commuting from point A to point B. Walking with a camera is different.. it assumes a heightened awareness to perception as a continual mental state; a sort of anticipatory blankness, hoping to be able to see clearly. For me, this state is almost counter productive. I find it hard to see in the way I want to see- freshly, without any preconceptions -when I'm intending to.. it seems more often that I'm hurrying along, preoccupied with something more or less trivial or important to me, and will suddenly look up and see a conjunction of light and form that may be a tree, a lit window, and a streetlight, but before they resolve into these recognizable forms.. before they are categorized as what is signified by the words "tree" "window" and "streetlight"... in that split second before they are consumed, they are the ever desired "other"... there is something here other than yourself, and it is infinite in possibility because you can actually SEE it, that it exists, and if one thing exists truly, then all things exist, including yourself, and for a moment you are truly engaged in it. Something suddenly springs into existence that is at once itself unique and discreet from all others, and a combination of all nights walking under trees lit by streetlights, and the passing glance takes on layers of years of experience, and the moment passes. I'm trying to find some way to make photographs that have some of this quality... a sort of infinite glance.