Two more pieces added to the text of Canyon Full of Cloud

I added two more sections of the text portion of my new work in the entry below, numbers 5 and 6. They were written today in Bend. You can see the photos below that.

First half, text for Canyon Full of Cloud

I couldn’t get to sleep last night, so I stayed up and wrote the first four of what I expect to be eight text pieces for the series of photos I shot yesterday. Here’s the first draft:

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Canyon Full of Cloud

1.

At night my legs go walking. The torn sheet testifies to this. The canyon has its own fabric, all torn to pieces. On the horizon it looks like a second sky coming up. This has only happened once. As if inhabited by a world. The cloud is nothing but particles. We are nothing but particles. We are nothing but a second sky, coming out of the ground.

2.

Around the bend is a series of failures. First, the failure of the light. Second, the failure of our presence and its consequences upon the light. This is not metaphorical, this is coming from below. Third is the failure of dying, which is a system that always succeeds. Fourth I can’t remember. Was that just today or was that something someone told me? Today is a failure of tomorrow. The voice is pretty sure of this, but the voice cannot be heard, so that’s the sixth failure.

3.

When someone waits to be sure of something, something always changes. The sage brush, the hard rocks, the time it takes to write about it, the lost key, the broken tooth. When your teeth start breaking what’s your mouth telling you? I can’t tell you apart from the story about yourself, now that the clouds have settled in. Broken Top, Three Fingered Jack, the Three Sisters, they all just disappeared. But down where the snakes live something is bound to be certain.

4.

Walter doesn’t remember, but that’s OK because he says he’s happy. I remember, so what does that make me? Over the lip of the canyon is nothing but cloud. As the particles erase the pieces, does that bring peace? Or is it just a contagion passing it on, flowing south to north? Do the pieces rearrange themselves when we’re not looking? And if so, are we the pieces?

5.

I can make a tree, says the drawing in the pine booth, I can make a fish. The vegetable is for decoration. The insects are for sound. The breakfast is for eating. As I eat, so am I eaten. There’s nothing as satisfying as hot liquid going down your throat. And ice water. Standing in the river you could just float away, watched by a snake, an otter, and a thousand fish.

6.

The particles barely move over the pieces, creating a trace. Multiply this by ten thousand years. One becomes the other. I am other,  just like you are, but not historically, merely really. I thank all the others for their words. Such a generous trace, rubbing against the fabric until it is torn like a veil. All this clouding around following, one and two and three. I was taught to count. I was taught to pee. I was taught to go to the graveyard every Sunday and watch my mother cry. I was taught my father disappeared. I was taught to carry a sharp knife. I was taught the order of everything in order to watch it go away. Like a sky.

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I’ve just added numbers 5 and 6. Like I said earlier, I anticipate eight altogether.

Canyon Full of Cloud

I shot this series today, descending into and ascending from the Deschutes River canyon. I’m waiting to see if text will follow.

It would appear I’m entering a grisaille period.

Possibly the beginning of a new series

The Sky’s The Limit show up at PDX

from Seated

Just got word from Keith Lachowicz that the photography show The Sky’s The Limit went up at PDX, concourse A.

I really like the idea that only travelers will ever see it. There’s something so un-precious about that. Besides, traveling by air needs all the small pleasures it can muster, and people who stream through concourse A will be seeing something more interesting than the Duratrans billboards at most other airports.

Twelve images from my series Seated are included in the show.

Thanks to RACC and Port of Portland.

from Seated

“A bow is alive only when it kills.” – Herakleitos

On one hand, there are people who say they photograph in order to see. On the other hand, there are people who clearly manufacture and then photograph the things in their heads.

I think maybe I photograph to find beautiful lies.

from The Brothers Grimm

Lies or perhaps untruths.

from The Brothers Grimm

I intend Norway

I have signed up for the workshop with JH Engtröm in Norway this June.

There are four living photographers who could attract me to virtually any corner of the globe for a chance to work with them. He’s one.

The others are: John Gossage, Daido Moriyama, and Dirk Braeckman.

I couldn’t be more excited.

Postscript for beheadingly

This photograph will be the last image and postscript for beheadingly.

The term “Warder”

Re beheadingly.

In the history of the Tower of London, the Warder (or Beefeater) was the prison guard and, when torture was performed, the torturer.

Images for beheadingly

Here are the images I’m thinking of for the book, beheadingly. You will find the text, which was written after the photographs were taken, and with these photographs in mind, here.

The first image (of Le Monsieur, as the French call him) is the cover.

That’s about all I know. I’m excited. All the images were shot in London, shooting blind for the most part (a few exceptions). And I never crop, so these are as shot. The new full title for beheadingly references London, which is crucial to understanding the whole. That title is:

beheadingly

or, Questions of London

I intend this to be a short book of words and images.