No one stands in any rapport anymore with any sailor as he may have done, before Homer, Melville, and Sergei Eisenstein. Having not been there, before them, I knew that what I held in my hand was not a recording device, but a chalice. How fraught, I certainly did know, the dutiful sailor's heart must be, to have been raised under a powerful and omniscient discipline, only to be cast onto a terribly more pitching deck than he had ever contemplated.
I loved them, but particularly, this one. I'd have been insane not to notice his defensive posture, for all its implication of relaxation. I'd have been ungrateful to protest the blurry half-light of the gangway to his place on deck. I was aware of his anxiety for order. I was aware of his confoundment, which mirrored my own. And yet, he stood so erect, so resourcefully proud against the conflicting vectors of the background and the oily murkiness of the foreground, that I did not think of Raskolnikov at his oilcloth dinner table. I thought of Onegin. And then the Leica admonished me for this unsteadiness, its frame so sober in its exactitude.
I thought of him, and exhaled the exposure as best I could. This is my very favourite photograph of a person.
No one stands in any rapport anymore with any sailor as he may have done, before Homer, Melville, and Sergei Eisenstein. Having not been there, before them, I knew that what I held in my hand was not a recording device, but a chalice. How fraught, I certainly did know, the dutiful sailor's heart must be, to have been raised under a powerful and omniscient discipline, only to be cast onto a terribly more pitching deck than he had ever contemplated.
ReplyDeleteI loved them, but particularly, this one. I'd have been insane not to notice his defensive posture, for all its implication of relaxation. I'd have been ungrateful to protest the blurry half-light of the gangway to his place on deck. I was aware of his anxiety for order. I was aware of his confoundment, which mirrored my own. And yet, he stood so erect, so resourcefully proud against the conflicting vectors of the background and the oily murkiness of the foreground, that I did not think of Raskolnikov at his oilcloth dinner table. I thought of Onegin. And then the Leica admonished me for this unsteadiness, its frame so sober in its exactitude.
I thought of him, and exhaled the exposure as best I could. This is my very favourite photograph of a person.