MOMENTS
Reading Caspar Henderson’s 21st Century Bestiary, reminded me that the Czech poet and immunologist Miroslav Holub defined the ‘dimension of the present moment’ as a little less than three seconds.
Available now from Bracket Books Ireland at outlets like FabHappy or WalkingCommentary.
I captured all seventeen of these chapbook images in about one sixth of a second over three summer months of travelling the island in the isolation of a camper van. I spent time selecting and preparing each of these images from hundreds of candidates over three weeks in desktop isolation. And so each of these exposure moments has been transmuted from vista to sensor, realised on a page and metamorphosed into many present moments.
– The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary (Granta, 2012, page 193)
PERHAPS
‘Our conscious, reasoning left-brain hemisphere is not the area that produces the esthetic qualities so essential in the world of art. The splitting up and merging of ideas into new combinations, and our aroused sensitive feelings about them – which give a drawing or painting its personal uniqueness – cannot be expressed unless they are freed from conscious thinking and awareness.’
– David Friend, Composition (Watson-Guptill, 1975, page 43).
AND
‘The only true voyage … would be … to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees’.
– Marcel Proust, The Captive: Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 5 (gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/0300501.txt, 1923, 2003)
SO
I looked up at the night sky and saw a palimpsest. Each photon had travelled vastly differing distances, some perhaps created long before the rise of the dinosaurs. Half of our own star’s output is invisible infrared and since our atmosphere absorbs most of it, I wondered about what we don’t see in daytime.
I had the filters removed from the sensor in a second-hand camera to enable me to look beyond the spectrum of visible light. With this other eye, freed from conscious thinking and awareness, I sought infrared marvels in the radiant and reflective heats of a summertime breakout.
Breakout is the eleventh of a dozen planned free issues in 2021 of a monthly chapbook of my photography. Any of the individual chapbooks are available for online purchase through FabHappy and TheUpliftKit.
They’re being issued by the calendar month, each edition limited to 200 copies, each copy uniquely numbered and posted at the end of each month. Price per copy is 10 plus postage. Where you live determines if that’s 10 USD or 10 Euro or 10 Sterling. You can chose to buy all 12 of the 2021 series for 100 currency units and that special offer is inclusive of packing and postage.
SUBSCRIPTION 2022
Thank you to the many who rallied to my call for an expression of interest in continuing publication. I’m delighted to say that there is enough support to continue production in 2022 but it has to be on a paid subscription basis. If you’re interested in a subscription for yourself or as a gift for others, would you please post a note to the contact page for WalkingCommentary which is here.
The offer for 2022 is for an annual subscription for the full set of 12 chapbooks for 60 currency units of any one of three currencies. That’s a dozen issues inclusive of all post and packaging, each delivered for just 5 USD or 5 Euro or 5 Sterling. Each issue will continue to be limited to 200 copies, each copy uniquely numbered and posted at the end of each month. Any of the individual chapbooks will continue to be available for online purchase through FabHappy and TheUpliftKit but at twice the price (plus P&P).
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