drmstream[writing]

The set­ting is so casual; it’s as if the extras were told to take a break, and some lay back to nap before the film­ing started back up again. The com­po­si­tion is ele­gant and clas­sic. The effect mutes the meta­phys­i­cal truth of the photo: This pic­ture chron­i­cles death. The fine line of the per­spec­tive draws our […]

In the great scheme of things, how much do things really change? Life was meaner and the time and space of human emo­tion more nar­row 130 years ago. But the essen­tial com­po­nents of the human con­di­tion were much like they were today. I’m reminded of these things when I look at the pho­tos below. Peo­ple cluster […]

..the unwieldy elephant,/ To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed/ His lithe pro­boscis… John Mil­ton, Par­adise Lost, Book IV We ele­phants are images of humil­ity, as when we/undertake our melan­choly migra­tions to die. Dan Chi­as­son, The Elephant

In the quiet of am empty cathe­dral, arche­types creep up on you. Yan­kee Sta­dium is that kind of place for a long-time base­ball fan. The imagery is mytho­log­i­cal; a mod­ern pan­theon of ordi­nary men who did un-ordinary things, who are held up in mem­ory as being some­thing more than men. Like Gods, they have their […]

I shared a bus ride in Ire­land once with a French man who car­ried more photo equip­ment than cloth­ing. It was 1979 and the bus ran local stops up into Done­gal from Killy­begs. I was on my way to a lit­tle town called Glen­columkille, where I’d spent a time­less week in a cot­tage with six […]

Ele­gant, eru­dite and ancient.