Notions
August 27, 2014 / Thank You, Joel Meyerowitz
If you don’t know this photographer, you should. Years ago, really before I started taking my own pictures, but had forever been enraptured by others’ images, I posted these words of his above my desk. See what you think.
“Photographers deal with things that are always disappearing. We’re on the edge of knowing, and then by a shred of feeling of almost no duration.
“You hope that by working you’ll produce an opening, you’ll stumble through your senses upon a photograph that’s instructive—a doorway—something more than just beautiful or well-made—something that you can’t quite handle that possesses you, something simple and visible but filled with mystery and promise.
“The thing itself. The place itself. You walk into the place and that’s it. It is other. The place resonates a quality that you respond to.
“Stay! You’re being spoken to—answer!
So—this image, from 1988, shows a place in the Red Center of Australia, near Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock), called The Olgas. Red sandstone rocks, worn into mysterious and compelling forms.
When we went there, we were told we had fifteen minutes and then we were to go on to Uluru. Wanting to get near, I walked rapidly along a small red sand path. Suddenly and with no warning whatsoever, I heard the rock face say my name. Really, I did.
This really happened. I heard my name, spoken there at the rocks. I took this picture.
Stay! You’re being spoken to!
Comments
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Jen Johnston 10:45am, 08/30/2014
Great post Hilary!