don't forget the fourth dimension

[walkingshadow]

I meant to post last night, at any time between seven (when I got home from the gym) and two (when I finally went to bed), but in between those times there was an hour-long conversation with S. (itself interrupted by the start-of-semester fire drill), livejournal, fic-reading of the Bruno and Boots kind (prompting this exchange with silentfire:

walkingshadow: i've been iconing
walkingshadow: and reading a bruno and boots story
walkingshadow: bruno and boots!
walkingshadow: wtf mate?
silentfire: see, i've never read bruno and boots
walkingshadow: yeah, ME NEITHER
silentfire: so . . .
silentfire: um
silentfire: why are you reading fic?
walkingshadow: it was rageprufrock!
silentfire: ah
silentfire: see, that explains everything
walkingshadow: and, like
walkingshadow: it was there?
walkingshadow: *facepalm*
silentfire: hee!
walkingshadow: the life of the fannish crackwhore is the life for meeee
silentfire: yo ho!
walkingshadow: *swings tankard*),

dinner, and, uh. Somehow I lost four to seven hours on the computer. *scratches head*

Tuesday night, in preparation for my Visual Anthropology assignment due Wednesday, I walked down to the Art and Architecture Library and called it a victory when I figured out how to get in: after hours, you have to go in the building opposite and double back across the second-floor walkover. And I triumphed also over the library catalog and the Library of Congress sorting system and the top shelf, and then was checked out by the rudest librarian I've ever met. So sorry to have to make you scan my Gator-1 card and bang your stamp twice. Twice! I suppose that is a lot to ask of a librarian at nine-thirty on a Tuesday night. As I was taking my books away I said, "thank you," and he gave me back the most grudging "you're welcome" I've ever heard from anyone in a service industry. Like, through clenched teeth and staring back at his computer screen already.

Anyway, I'd picked Bill Brandt for the assignment (pick your favorite photographer, pay attention to what you like about their work, choose five examples and bring them in to present the photographer to the class) and I walked around with the book all day yesterday, and it felt like carting around my sketchbooks all through high school, because it's the same shape and size, black and hardbound and close to 11"x14". It makes me want to start drawing again, partly because of the memory of the feel of art supplies, and because I'm refocusing on the visual world—or rather, its components, on light and lines, and I'm kinda itchy to create.

I brought in Bill Brandt and explained that I liked photos with high black-and-white contrast, lots of texture, strong lines and shapes, good filling of the space, and movement across the page. The prof asked about subject matter, and I answered that the picture was more important than its subject; but because I like high contrast, lines, etc., I tend to gravitate more toward portraits and city scenes, and away from landscapes, which tend to do nothing for me—especially in black-and-white. "So, no Ansel Adams for you?" she asked with a smile. "No," I agreed, "no Ansel Adams for me." Someone else talked about Stieglitz and the progression of his career, and mentioned that he ended up on clouds at one point; and I'd seen some, flipping through photography books in the art library, and really, what's more uninteresting than clouds shot in black-and-white?

But all that's not entirely true. Or—not exclusively true. Because I can get excited about a picture if it tells a particularly vivid story, or captures some improbable moment in time; I like portraits of important people (scientists, politicians, inventors) when they're young and doing everyday things—especially when they're laughing. Brandt has a photograph taken in London in 1940 of dozens of people sleeping on the tube platform at Elephant & Castle, and that caught at me unexpectedly.

Photography and poetry and art generally that makes a point, or is self-referential, and consciously challenges commonly held notions of what "art" really is . . . that's great, and it needs to be done, and I like seeing complacent elitists unsettled and unseated, but I can look at it once, glean its message, and be done with it; it's not that it isn't art, by whatever definition you want to give it (or refuse to make), but will it make my eyes wander over it, mesmerized and jealous, for minutes or hours at a time? Gertrude Stein, don't think I'm not looking at you.

We talked about technique and equipment and lighting as the subjects came up, and the prof mentioned Cartier-Bresson and the divine moment, prompting me to write in my notes, DON'T FORGET THE FOURTH DIMENSION. As promised, we broke for lunch halfway through and ate what she'd brought for us: bread and cheese, corn chips and hummus, salsa, and queso, roasted peanuts, and an Entenman's pound cake. We munched while she turned on Trance and Dance in Bali, an old-school, seminal and representative anthropological documentary by Margaret Mead. That prompted discussion of the voice-of-God narrative and the question of who gets to create what is real. This is something like the issue of who has the rights to memory, which we brought up every once in a while in the seminar class of doooom, but which we never actually answered. She (the prof) also brought up juxtaposition, and was of the opinion that it's possible to use it in writing, but it's easiest and most obvious to execute in visual media. I don't think she's wrong, but I came to juxtaposition as a literary device first, and I'd say that in writing it's used most often by poets and journalists. It is the most obvious incarnation of show-don't-tell, and journalists are forbidden to tell; instead they put sentences next to each other that are, in themselves, not particularly loaded; the power comes from the placement, and by reading not only the sentences but the transitions between them, we discover the author's amusement, bemusement, anger, and disgust. We talked about the notion of objectivity vs. subjectivity, and how those are terms we should probably admit don't really exist, at least not in opposition to each other. That the most successful journalists don't remain aloof, but are deeply situated, and the most powerful pieces present two or more deeply subjective points of view, with some sort of "objective" narrative running through them; but the narrative is not the source of the power. The big problem with the kind of objectivity associated with something like the voice-of-God narration of an anthropological documentary is that it masks its inherent subjectivity; it implies there is only one perspective.

Next week's assignment is an autobiography of sorts: my personal space and how I live in it in ten photographs. I am trying desperately to expand my scope beyond a showcase of the apartment's interior decoration as if I were attempting to put it on the market. She's exhorted us to be creative, to above all experiment, with lighting and timing and the definition of the assignment. How do I represent myself? I'd like to take a picture of my room in the dark with all the lights off and all my LED lights glowing: the base of my phone, my cell phone as it charges, the surge protectors, the monitor and speakers and printer, my clock radio, and my computer breathing as it sleeps. I don't know if I can arrange a shot they'd all fit into, or if I can figure out the technique with my digital camera. Suggestions?

After class got out at 1:30, I walked down to the Journalism courtyard to see gjstruthseeker for fifteen or twenty seconds before she dashed off to class. I sat for a while with Bill Brandt and the crossword puzzle, and gave sober, serious thought to lying down on the bench and taking a nap before African History at 4:05. I did not nap. I hauled myself back toward the computer lab and screwed around in there for a while, then bought myself a smoothie and went to class. I think it's a bad sign when he starts calling roll at the beginning of class and I think, "only forty-five minutes to go!"

The other night I followed links and found the community foriconsake and from there I found somebody who'd made these stunning icons from Bright Eyes song titles. People make me crazy with jealousy, you know?

And speaking of icons, there is a story, perhaps apocryphal, told about Marilyn Monroe: if she stepped out of her dressing room and the first person who saw her said, "Marilyn! What a gorgeous dress!" she turned around and put on something else. Because you weren't supposed to see the dress; you were supposed to see her. Which is to say, I love brushes and wish I were a little more adept at using them, but I also think there's some kind of line between using brushes to make a gorgeous icon, and using brushes because you can. I ran across someone who'd made a useful icon-making tutorial who actually said she was feeling self-conscious about not using enough brushes, and that drew me up so short, because isn't it enough brushes when the icon looks like what you want it to? I would rather see the icon than your brushes or technique. At some point I started wishing that some icon-makers would pay more attention to what they were iconning—not that they aren't making beautiful icons, but not every icon should be getting the treatment it's getting, and eventually it's only repetitive. Possibly now I will be shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. But that's okay.

And then livejournal exploded O.o I don't watch Lost, but watching livejournal is an evening's entertainment all by itself.