#19 - Trees and Stones

You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as a sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the tiger’s passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are.

Italo Calvino

This is what I read this morning. It’s about the most poetic, if not succinct, description of what’s on my mind these days when I’m out taking photos. There are things that refer to other things, and there are things that refer only to themselves. I mentioned the last time that I wrote here that recently I’ve been shooting simply what tugs at my eye, without trying to imbue the image with meaning beforehand. The result has been… a surprise: I’ve got a stack of images that don’t really make sense (Well, I expected that), but making them has been some of the most fun I’ve had shooting in a long time. Coaxed out of autopilot, my brain is grinding a little harder than before. I’m constantly eyeing out everything around me, thinking that there might be something there I can work with, some image lying in wait.

I was discussing all this with a friend on a hike recently, and he jokingly responded to my enthusiasm for pure image with the dreaded aphorism: “Sounds like style over substance to me.” I’ve always felt a bit insecure about hearing this in reference to my work (which you think would have given me pause when hurling it mercilessly at film after film that didn’t curry my favor, ha.) My only defense is to point out that the images aren’t all that stylish. But anyway, I’m keeping at it. There’s something getting stoked behind my eyes, partly from the images that seem to work, partly from the hunt of something that I don’t yet know how it looks. I feel like I’ve been running into the forest after a will-o'-the-wisp, and as every disappeared child knows, this time I’ll catch it.

So some things point to other things (that is, they have meaning). And some things are just trees and stones (having no real meaning at all). But maybe herein lies the heart of my little corner of photography: with enough trees you have a forest; a mountain is made of stones. The relentless collection of these little squares of colour amounts to something at the end of the day. The meaning enters in the action, in going out to take photos, to look in weird places for weird things, in talking to strangers with an eye inclined to the magic moment, there’s your meaning right there.