Loveseat
January 31st, 20131/31/2013 I've been thinking some more about what I try to show in my photographs. When I was working in science (biology), it seemed to me that when one finished science's discussion of something (a tree, a flower, a cat, a star) there was always something missing--something More. It's that something More that I'm after.
Another way to approach this comes from Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry. He tried to show what he called the inscape of a thing-. He was excellent at getting at this inscape in his poetry, as in the following lines: Glory be to God for dappled things-- For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow: For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings; Landscape plotted and pierced . . . The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness . . . the riot of a rout Of , , , boys from the town Bathing . . . the boys with Dare and with downdolphinry and bell bright bodies huddling out, Are earth world, air world, water world thorough hurled, all by turn and turn about. So whether one is looking at fish or birds, a mountain or the Grand Canyon, or human beings, there is something that one sees (if one is really seeing and not just looking) that is an inscape of that being. And none of what Hopkins shows us is captured by a scientific description. There is something More here than is or even can be uncovered by scientific study (given science's presuppositions). And I believe that our education systematically and deliberately seeks to weed out our ability to see this More. Again, it is this More of things that I am usually seeking to show in my photographs. Comments are closed.
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