Plate 36 A Harvest of Death. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. July 1863 Photographed by Timothy H. O’Sullivan Slowly, over the misty fields of Gettysburg—as all reluctant to expose their ghastly horrors to the light—came the sunless morn, after the retreat by Lee’s broken army. Through the shadowy vapors, it was, indeed, a “harvest of death” that was […]
When I walk along the street, the imagery is vital and immediate. A strong jaw. Her lips make deep creases when they purse. He’s got his shoulders thrown back like he’s been congratulated about something that he didn’t do. Her forehead is pressed forward as if she’s looking into life through a plate glass window. That […]
Experience presents a constant puzzle: the fullest sense of experience is to be wholly in the world, immersed and accepting of the things that we encounter, surrendered to the moment. To share these moments requires tremendous art. You can’t force meaning, say to yourself that you’ll use this technique or that technique to mimic something […]
To make art, we have to let go of our conceptions, trample our structures, release our soul. When we have laid it all out, we’ll understand ourselves, the essence of our sound. This takes courage. This great photo is one of many musician photos by Juan Carlos Hernandez.
I was a deaf boy and the trees spoke to me. I walked through the woods at night. The wind rioted around me, pulling at leaves and branches, trying to tear the roots from the ground. The moonlight turned hard and thin. The air was cold with the salt spray from the bay. The trees moaned dully. […]
What do you make of a moment when you realize the you are a super-structure, or an outcropping, and that the foundations that you relied on blindly aren’t squarely placed on earth, but are adjunct and extraneous? We are seduced by the fragile beauty of these images when we encounter them: beach cottages on stilts, […]
Look at the photo and imagine. I am remembering. The field was narrower and bordered by a thin wall of trees that separated one field from the next. In winter, the frozen ground crunched beneath your boots, and the brittle corn stalks crackled like stale cereal. The collar of your old army coat is bunched […]
Context is so much of what you understand when you experience an image. Take the photo below. I came across it browsing. It’s published on a site I don’t know. The image is styled to be jarring: a young child of indeterminate age and gender, sporting a monocle and with a cigarette dangling from the lips. The photo […]