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* de minimis non curat praetor / the praetor does not concern himself with trifles.

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    Longreads #1: Franzen, Evans & Frank

    Stairs_resized
    Εδώ, σε μία από τις πολλές συνεντέυξεις που έδωσε ο Jonathan Franzen την περασμένη χρονιά, με αφορμή την έκδοση του Freedom, μιλά στον Stephen Burn για τη ζωή του, τις λογοτεχνικές επιρροές του, και τη χαρά του γραψίματος.

    Fun is still an important part of writing. I want to bring pleasure with everything I write. Intellectual pleasure, emotional pleasure, linguistic pleasure, aesthetic pleasure. I have in my mind five hundred examples of novels that have given me pleasure, and I try to do work that gives back some of what those five hundred books have given me.

    * * *

    Το παρακάτω δοκίμιο του Tod Papageorge, αναφέρεται στην επιρροή που άσκησαν οι American Photographs του Walker Evans στον Robert Frank και το έργο με το οποίο καθιερώθηκε, τους The Americans.
    Το κείμενο αρχικά δημοσιεύθηκε το 1981 ως μέρος του καταλόγου μιας έκθεσης που επιμελήθηκε ο Papageorge. Μιας και δεν περιλαμβάνονται οι φωτογραφίες στις οποίες αναφέρεται, παραθέτω μερικά αποσπάσματα με links στις εικόνες που αντιστοιχούν.

    Σελ. 1: And while a tin relic and a flag may be difficult to reconcile as a comparison, they are here because, apart from being stunning photographs, they speak of a mutual skepticism – the Ionic column is crushed, the flag immense and torn – and of both photographers’ gift for symbol-making.

    Σελ.5: Evans shows facades and objects that, while framed to mimic the planar severities of Cubism, are so precisely and lucidly described that their meanings, and not their pictorial structures, are what strike us about them first. A battered tin relic is a symbolic fact and only incidentally a perfect Cubist construction; and a movie poster details an emblematic horror before it asks
    questions about the nature of collage.
    Σελ.5: When, for example, he [Evans] frames two chairs in a black barber shop, the battered room they share is described not only as a dilapidated vanity, but also as a meeting place and, possibly, an improvised surgery (where a properly desperate man might go to have a tooth pulled or a bullet removed from a wound), meanings which reside in the detail of Evans’ picture as an etymology resides in a word.

    Σελ.5: Robert Frank’s photograph of a barber chair, on the other hand, owns no particular meaning at all: in its collapsed space, the chair glows with the insolent mystery of an object ruling a troubling dream (a dream inseparable from the photographer himself, whose reflection is outlined on the screen door).

    Σελ. 6: In Frank's transforming vision of America, a car is a casket, a trolley a prison, a flag a shroud [...].
    Το κείμενο:

    Tod Papageorge: Walker Evans and Robert Frank, An Essay on Influence

    Tags » B&W Books English Greek Longreads Photography
    • 20 August 2011
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  • Orestis F's Space

    Information worker. Amateur Photographer. Movie-addict. News junkie. Book lover. Dog Person. Tweeting @orestisf

  • About Orestis F

    Information worker. Amateur Photographer. Movie-addict. News junkie. Book lover. Dog Person. Tweeting @orestisf

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