Friday, February 25, 2011

my son loves rilke and so do I... (i echo him here)

And you inherit the green
of vanquished gardens
and the motionless blue of fallen skies,
[...]

You inherit the autumns, folded like festive clothing
in the memories of poets; and all the winters,
like abandoned fields, bequeath you their quietness.
You inherit Venice, Kazan, and Rome.

Florence will be yours, and Pisa's cathedral,
Moscow with bells like memories,
[...]

Sounds will be yours, of string and brass and reed,
and sometimes the songs will seem
to come from inside you.

[...]
And painters paint their pictures only
that the world, so transient as you made it,
can be given back to you,
to last forever.

RM Rilke

Thursday, February 24, 2011

a hint of lilac


photograph as trace

Unlike any visual image, a photograph is not a rendering,
an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually
a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist,
belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.
John Berger

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

what we forget...

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget.

In this -- as in other ways -- they are the opposite of paintings.

Paintings record what the painter remembers.

Because each one of us forgets different things,

a photo more than a painting may change its

meaning according to who is looking at it.

John Berger

Monday, February 21, 2011

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

on seeing

Seeing comes before words.
The child looks and recognises before it can speak.
But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words.
It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world;
we explain that world with words,
but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it.
The relation between what we see and what we know
is never settled. John Berger

hermes flowers


Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

what is a photograph?

A friend came to see me in a dream.
From far away.
And I asked in the dream:
"Did you come by photograph or by train?"
All photographs are a form of transport and
an expression of absence.

John Berger