The aesthetics of this oilslick lifetime.
So in the middle of showing my photo professor, Terri, my proofs for this next critique, she comes across I shot I took of an oily puddle in a rainstorm at night. She says, "This is--beautiful, surprisingly so." Then she looks at me and with one eyebrow up asks, "Why do you like taking pictures of stains?"
This photo is merely part of a trend I hadn't noticed, I guess further proof of the work of the subconscious in the formation of art. (If I can call my photos art.) Anyhow, it made me start thinking about it. A lot. And very hard. I knew there was a reason, but it was subliminal--I had to find the right way to think about it, and then I could articulate it.
One of the projects I've always wanted to do in the writing world was to craft a beautiful story about someone ordinary. Utterly ordinary. Not like the aestheticized ordinary of American Beauty or anything like that--an actual ordinary person, someone who lives the unsung life that 90% of us share. The people we forget about. Those we think aren't worth the effort. I've always wanted to write that story, but I've never been able to. (Though a lot of my stories do involve basically normal people in basically normal situations, I'd like to think.)
I can create just that project with photography. One of my current crop of exhibition-quality prints is a chalk mark on a brick wall. I don't know who did it, or why they marked on the wall; it just looks like a scribble. But that photograph encapsulates something. These stains--oilslicks, chalk marks, refuse--are the discarded eulogies of forgotten people. They are all that remain of the everyday human, of the person who moves through our world without notice or import, and even this reminder that they move we throw away. The chalk marks are washed away. Who even thinks of oilslicks anymore? But every rainbow shine in the parking lot is the epitaph of someone just like you, in that same parking spot, in that same place, only no one even cares.
I feel like, if I don't call attention to these things--these discarded people and these discarded markings--then no one will ever care. It would be as if everyday was your funeral, and everyday no one showed up.
This photo is merely part of a trend I hadn't noticed, I guess further proof of the work of the subconscious in the formation of art. (If I can call my photos art.) Anyhow, it made me start thinking about it. A lot. And very hard. I knew there was a reason, but it was subliminal--I had to find the right way to think about it, and then I could articulate it.
One of the projects I've always wanted to do in the writing world was to craft a beautiful story about someone ordinary. Utterly ordinary. Not like the aestheticized ordinary of American Beauty or anything like that--an actual ordinary person, someone who lives the unsung life that 90% of us share. The people we forget about. Those we think aren't worth the effort. I've always wanted to write that story, but I've never been able to. (Though a lot of my stories do involve basically normal people in basically normal situations, I'd like to think.)
I can create just that project with photography. One of my current crop of exhibition-quality prints is a chalk mark on a brick wall. I don't know who did it, or why they marked on the wall; it just looks like a scribble. But that photograph encapsulates something. These stains--oilslicks, chalk marks, refuse--are the discarded eulogies of forgotten people. They are all that remain of the everyday human, of the person who moves through our world without notice or import, and even this reminder that they move we throw away. The chalk marks are washed away. Who even thinks of oilslicks anymore? But every rainbow shine in the parking lot is the epitaph of someone just like you, in that same parking spot, in that same place, only no one even cares.
I feel like, if I don't call attention to these things--these discarded people and these discarded markings--then no one will ever care. It would be as if everyday was your funeral, and everyday no one showed up.
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