-
Reading is Tactile
Knausgaard’s collection of essays is a joy to read. While the essays in Autumn are all quite good, the real pleasure comes from the physicality of the book. The coarse texture to the dusk jacket. The pages are a smooth, heavy paper that has a sensuous feel. The illustrations and the printed words look better on this paper, in part because the pages are pleasure to hold and to turn. Knausgaard has a smart essay…
-
Preservation, Nostalgia, Loss
Photography seems always to imagine a different world. Photographers don’t record the reality they see, they consecrate a reality they wish to see. In this way, photographs are always about a world that no longer exists. The lure of dilapidated buildings, of abandoned places, and of weed-choked roads testify to the photographer’s urge to record and celebrate lost scenes. Photography teeters between preservation and nostalgia. It is difficult to preserve without the taint of nostalgia,…
-
Autumn is Coming
Looking out across the backyard this afternoon I watched a cloud of leaves fall to the ground. Despite the warm, humid day, fall is coming. As the days become shorter and the sun meanders more obliquely across the sky, I look forward to the most colorful season of the year. Autumn hikes are magical. The rustling of dry leaves in the trees when a cool breeze blows gently through them. The sound of your footfalls…
-
Urban Shadows
The last weekend of summer in Philadelphia offered the chance to look for contrast between light and dark. Nothing metaphorical or profound. Just shadows. Looking for and at shadows invites a different way of seeing the city, a way that often requires looking down, looking for lines and patterns, for fragments of people going about their lives. The shoes and the streets tell us a lot about who the person is. Feet walking to work,…
-
Architecture of Religion in the South West
There is a special aesthetic to religion in the South West. A starkness to the architecture and design, born perhaps from the struggle to survive in the harsh climate. Amazingly, some of the missions and churches have survived centuries. The San Xavier del Bac mission south of Tucson, for example. Founded in the late seventeenth century, the church dates from the late eighteenth. It’s hard to believe that the population in the area was sufficient…
-
Postcard Archive: September 2020
This month’s postcard recalls a warm summer evening and swarms of mosquitos, oh and a comet too.
-
Parched
The deserts of the south west is an inhospitable place. Hot. Dry. Desolate. Even the plants and animals most adapted to the climate seem to struggle just to survive. Edward Abbey warned us against venturing into those deserts. Only the foolhardy ignore his warnings. And yet some of us are unable to resist the siren calls of those lands. Abbey himself was succumbed again and again to the lure of the deserts. His body lies…
-
52 / 3 Available
The latest issue of 52 arrived yesterday. They look great. I had them printed locally, at Fireball Printing in Philadelphia. They did an excellent job. The print quality is superb. The paper has a nice, rich, substantial feel, making it a pleasure to sit and look through while enjoying a cup of coffee. I’ve started distributing them. So let me know if you want a copy.
-
Moon over Ardmore
Friday evening around 8:00pm. Tired professionals should have been driving home or to meet friends at a local restaurant or bar. But instead the street was empty. I stood there in the middle of Lancaster through two cycles of green-yellow-red, green-yellow-red. On one side a Chevy van sat empty with its flashers blinking. On the other side, a Toyota Prius jutted out from between two buildings, its flashers silently signaling to the van’s. Perhaps they…
-
52 / 3
I just received the proof for the next issue of 52. This issue collects together black and white photographs documenting some effects of the current pandemic — the vacant streets and empty businesses — as well as some photographs of the city at night. As with the previous issues, I enjoy the way the printed photograph encourages a different engagement with the image. There is no scrolling, no share-on-social-media button (no buttons at all, in…