January 27th, 2018

Scott County, Missouri, again, this time sunset

This morning I came across the following, written by Quentin Bajac for a Museum of Modern Art show, "Stephen Shore/Solving Pictures."
"There are no heroics in Shore's images, but rather a poetics of the ordinary and the everyday . . . echoing Walker Evans' desire to reveal the 'deep beauty in things as they are.'  His approach can be tied to a long American tradition of elevating the simple and commonplace . . . to a certain poetry and a way of life, from Ralph Waldo Emerson writing that I 'embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low,' to Walt Whitman championing 'a perfectly transparent, plate-glassy style, artless,' characterized by 'clearnesss, simplicity, no twistified or foggy sentences.'"

Reading that led to my realizing a  certain similarity between my writing and my making of images.  I quoted here recently  Twain's "eschew surplusage" and Jefferson's "never use two words when one will do" and I tried to follow those recommendations  in my writing.  It may be that my writing expereiece  is why when I turned to making images I came to admire Shore's work— it resonates quickly and intuitively with what I seek in both my writing with ink and with light.