Final Photo Essay

Link to Photographs:

Urban Agriculture

As writers...some things seem to take shape on their own volition, as if there were some force hiding from us of a universal and potent quality that is too big to comprehend. It has to be dealt out in small servings and tirelessly searched for. It has to wear a veil so that we may only peek at it every now and again. Sometimes it seems like reality is just a reference point, or medium, through which this force communicates to us. There is a necessary filter in our minds, put in place to shadow these somethings, that we may slowly uncover little sparks of what humanity has been searching for, lest everything happen all at once and we are consumed. Yet...somehow Plato was able to escape the cave.

There are little gaps in reality, tiny glitches in the matrix that don't seem to make sense, places in the air that seem to have burped, shifted it's contents along a fault line, and revealed a crevasse descending down, down, deep into the rabbit hole. As humans, these are the places where we must look. These things we see every day that don't make a lot of sense will eventually emit shafts of light like the macro-cosmic face of God trying to squeeze through the sheer eye of a pinhole. And even these small portions are too confusing, but it's our only way of making sense of it. Out of every banality, there is something to be said. It is in these little gaps that we must look to find some sort of truth, and meaning for our lives. Our job as writers is to dive in to these holes, try to interpret towards the bottom, and resurface to name the unnameable.

What I see going on in these photos is one of those glimpses meant to be extracted from behind the curtain of reality. It is a tension creating a crevasse. The reason I've called this collection Urban Agriculture is because what I see going on in these photos resembles the tension that occurs when urban environments intrude into that of the pastoral, especially in the business of agriculture. Our romantic vision of a typical farm setting usually consists of an ideal world with bright red barns, quaint wooden fences, and clothing hanging out on the line. It's where chickens are not cooped up, cattle roam freely through the pasture, and farmer John still works with plow in hand as he sows seeds that have never heard of pesticides or Monsanto products. However, we know that this often not the case. There is a gap here that is getting wider. Reality is crumbling at the nexus of a few grain silos. What was once a symbol of abundance and prosperity is now a symbol of poverty and better days, as graffiti begins to declare war on the sides of walls. It reminds us now, instead, of a standard of life we have set for ourselves that is reaching a point of excess and unsustainability. It's all machinated. And from here, we gain access to the bottom of the well. 

Urban Agriculture: Where the Pastoral, Art, and Industrial Urbanization Meet

Here's a link to the photos, first of all. I was having trouble figuring out how to put a slideshow on here:

Urban Argriculture

I'll have to be honest, when I first set out to take these pictures, I didn't really have a particular theme in mind. I kind of just decided to go for it and see what happened. To my pleasant surprise, the theme I was apparently searching for just happened to take shape on it's own volition. I love it when life works out that way. I've included a lot more than ten, but seeing as how this was our first presentation I just decided to post all the ones I thought were worth keeping and get your guys' opinions on them. From there, I plan to narrow this collection down a little bit, and maybe even go out and take some more.

  Before I even decided on a theme, I knew I wanted to try my best to keep a sense of symmetry and order. The formal structuring of the photos helps to convey more of a sense of how farming, once a messy, work-with-your-hands job, is being transformed into more and more a corporate business, rather than one which is privately owned. The symmetrical ordering helped to conjure up the thought-out structural formalities that you might find in a city blueprint, as opposed to the more chaotic blueprint of nature. This sort of rigidly planned aspect I think helped to offer a nice tension for the context of a pastoral world that is not rigidly planned at all.

The reason I've called this collection Urban Agriculture is because what I see going on in these photos resembles the tension that occurs when urban environments intrude into that of the pastoral, especially in the business of agriculture. Our romantic vision of a typical farm setting usually consists of an ideal world with bright red barns, quaint wooden fences, and clothing hanging out on the line. It's where chickens are not cooped up, cattle roam freely through the pasture, and farmer John still works with plow in hand as he sows seeds that have never heard of pesticides or Monsanto products. However, we know that this often not the case. As the world grows larger we see a blurring of the line between urban and rural, in so far as the rural landscape is becoming almost an extension of it's urban twin, both in look and in lifestyle. Grain silos grow taller and larger as companies begin to take control. Silos start looking more like rural skyscrapers as a fast-growing nation quickly reaches a sustainability breaking point. What was once a symbol of abundance and prosperity is now a symbol of poverty and better days, as graffiti begins to declare war on the sides of walls. It reminds us now, instead, of a standard of life we have set for ourselves that is reaching a point of excess and unsustainability. It's all machinated. For once, there is now a man-made boundary that exists between agriculture and nature, and one can start to see more resemblances of an urban environment.

In the Lobby of the Secret Service Headquarters There Hangs a Picture of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Coincidence?

Richard Ross / Architecture of Authority

     


Richard Ross' photography, and especially his collection Architecture of Authority, stood out to me more than any of the other photo essays that were presented to us, both in subject matter and in form. With the orderly, symmetrical arrangement and subtle, yet, domineering and dramatic perspective of the objects in the picture, it felt like I was looking at a still from the police state love-child of Pink Floyd's The Wall and a Stanley Kubrick film (which, as an afterthought, would be a pretty bad ass combination for a movie).

By making good use of the architectural elements present in his environment, Ross projects an aesthetically pleasing, yet very disturbing perspective onto everyday objects that would otherwise remain dry and static. But still, the most interesting thing about these photographs is that in his critique of institutionalized power and abuse of authority they manage to remain absent and void of any presence of these same corrupt authority figures, or of any human life form. It's almost as if the corruption existed within the present space itself, as if it was there when it was built, as if the purpose behind this architectural design was masterminded with the principles of domination and submission, the master/slave relationship, in mind. 

The elements of action in this photograph (which happen to be furniture and other various household scenery) only create meaning from how their forms interact with each other within their predefined spaces, and therefore, paradoxically transform the viewer into a passive subject predestined by his environment. They show humanity as a majority living under the suspicious thumb of a precious, paranoid few who wish to remain this way through the guise of propaganda that tells its subjects "Be A Happy Worker!" And the only reason these elements are effective is because they lack a human presence. With bodies filling the seats of the auditoriums and prison cells, we lack a proper structural perspective on how these institutions are inherently set up to control and indoctrinate the individual. The creepy, cathartic feeling that the viewer is left with comes from the sudden realization that these are scenes and activities that we participate in every day.

What Ross is getting at is not so much that corruption of power exists within the individual, but in the established system he has created for himself that is almost doomed to breed corruption. His photos depict an almost Orwellian society of citizens who are predetermined, by simple fact of behavioral conditioning through environmental stimuli, to be unwillingly manipulated into obedience. And within these manipulative scenes, Ross simultaneously manages to also bring broad overtones of aesthetic pleasure which inspire fantastical dreams of grandeur and beautiful architectural landscapes within a man-made world, that seeks to subvert any sort of fantasy or beauty that might remain. And therein lies the trickery. It's almost as if these scenes were artificially in place before humanity, like a child's empty play set, constructed by the powers that be, which already has the Barbie dream house and the Malibu roadster, and just needs some bodies to fill the seats and carry out instructions. The only exception is that the dream house is a heavily surveillanced prison cell and the Malibu roadster is your inevitable casket hurling down the interstate at 85 mph (not that we would know the difference between dream houses and prison cells, anyway). Man is a victim in the environment of his own invention.

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door...

You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no 

knowing where you might 

be swept off to."

-- J.R.R. Tolkien

~Photographs by Kenny Johnson

John Lennon and Yoko Ono

For those who may not know, this photo was once featured on the cover of TIME magazine many decades ago. For those even less in the know, pictured here is Yoko Ono and John Lennon of The Beatles' fame and legacy. But, even without any previous knowledge of who these people are, what context the photo was taken in, or what the history behind the photo is, it still manages to remain a striking image by itself. There still remains a certain subtext, or shadow of meaning, underneath the glamour which speaks even larger volumes about humanity and the nature of our experience, than any historical or socio-political interpretation could ever hope to achieve. This subtext is in many ways more important because regardless of context, there is still the steady pulse-beat that thumps in the throat of the image. This resonates with a certain part of us that is rooted and connected to an eternal humanity, existing throughout the ages. These shadows, what lives in between the lines, are what remind us that we are human; it captures a moment of innocent, sexual vulnerability and tenderness that is often concealed and bastardized by today's cultural piety. What's more, it reassures us, "expressing and embracing our sexuality is perfectly okay; we are human, after all."

For me this photo captures a shifting. It drastically affects the way I perceive the relationship between man and woman, masculine and feminine roles, love and subservience. More conventional gender roles depict woman as subservient to man, and in a way, this subservience is what defines her quality of femininity, and even reciprocally, his quality of masculinity. However, the elements in this photo show a balancing, and reversal of these roles. There's a dramatic contrast between the artifice of dark clothing and the more natural, blemished, light skin texture which adds a yin and yang element, and an interdependence between male and female. It suggests that within this balance, there exists an idyllic microcosm, a loving relationship that is in stasis with the universal macrocosm, and is in many ways, perfect.

John Lennon lies in an exposed posture that reveals something perhaps concealed within man. It is a certain vulnerability and dependence upon woman, seen by his infantile, fetal positioning that clings on to her like a newborn to his mother. He needs her to sustain life, and yet manages to give back for it in terms of love and protection. In a mythical context, this photo represents a reliance of man on the mother goddess, and life giver. Therefore, we also see a cultural shift, which manages to break away from a masculine centered culture. Yoko is the fertile provider, yet beauty and fertility is as a fragile flower, and still requires tenderness and protection in man's embrace.

The Plantation Overseer: An Interpretation

Plantation Overseer and His Field Hands, Near Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1936
Photographer: Dorothea Lange

Sometimes Mr. Jefferson took us out for a Coke on Sunday afternoons when church was over, after the baptism by fire from God's Mississippi sun had all but dampened and wilted our Sunday best. He never let us miss an opportunity to come to church in all the years I knew him. That was Mr. Jefferson; he always had to have a car full of people to bring with before he even thought about stepping through those swinging church doors. Every Sunday at 9 a.m. he'd be outside my house with his wife and a charcoal Ford, honking that horn. On certain days I didn't feel like coming, he'd always make a point to stop in later and visit, and offer me and the boys to go out to lunch sometime, anyway. He'd take anyone out to eat, and talk about anything. "If Jesus was alive today, he'd be drinkin' Coca-Cola," he'd always say, "I bet he'd be a plantation man. Yes, sir. He'd be drinkin' the red, white, and blue, and nappin' in the shade; that's for damn sure." He always said a lot of strange stuff like that, that no one ever quite understood. Mr. Jefferson talked a little bit slower than most folks, a bit softer. He'd always pause between thoughts, like he was really thinking about something. Then he'd let a long draw of tobacco spit shine up the dirt, and tip back his afternoon flask of whiskey. "It's too hot in this Mississippi sun," he'd say. We'd just eat our food, and nod, "Sure is."

The last time I saw him was a Sunday, few days before he passed away. I saw him at the gorcer's, after I told him I didn't much care to go that church with him anymore. He understood, but told me something then that still rings clearer in my ears than any church organ or hymnal ever had. "Listen, I know a lot of folks down at the congregation might give ya certain eyes, and treat ya like yer different. I know 'cause I get the same. But dont' let a few opinions stop ya from being who ya are, from doing what ya need to do. Don't let anyone ever tell ya ya ain't never been worth a damn." Ever since he died I can never drink a Coke without thinking about my dear friend Mr. Jefferson, or about what he said that day. It was the 1930's in Mississippi. There was plenty of hate still burning in the veins of people claiming to be God's chosen, and there still is today. It's as hot as the Mississippi sun, burning on the back of every preacher, and on their tongues during the Sunday sermon. But not Mr. Jefferson; he'd been colorblind his whole life. All he ever wanted was to take us out for a Coke, cool down a bit, and see what was new. He was just tending to God's plantation. That's all he ever did.

Why I Write

Making spaces where space has never been, some create the universe with graphite, paint, smudged hands, and a smock apron. Others conjure up ethereal landscapes with their breath and the air around them, funneling it through strings and hollow, brass tubes. Some people never make anything at all. They only live for the journey, to fully immerse themselves under the surface and not come back up until they've discovered a bit of something. They live so that when the knock from the other side gets louder, they can confidently reply, "Through trough and crest, I cherished it all." Still, others only know how to draw pictures with words, and for all these reasons, I write.  

But what is the point of placing words on a page? The act of it seems hollow. Great things are only created from blood, laughter, love, and tears. To write, for me, is as much about wearing the carpet raw in little circled paths on the floor, peeking through my blinds at three in the morning with droopy, bloodshot eyes. Sometimes it finds me in an upward trance, playing catch with the fluorescence on the ceiling, tossing that piece of fruit in the air one last time and hoping it comes down with an answer attached to it. And the answer is always the same. To write anything worthwhile is to stare death in the eyes, steal breath from something beautiful, hold it, then get lost on purpose and escape; to be honest with ourselves; to make bad decisions, and know what it's like to wake up lonely and sore; to lose something you love, become vanquished, and get it back again. Even when the pencil doesn't push the paper, we are always writing. Even if the words aren't there, we are always living. The universe is a story; all we do is unfold.

 I write for intoxication, for catharsis, because Baudelaire said, "be continually drunk," and Plath told me I couldn't stop the blood jet from flowing, anyway. I write because beating hearts don't fall silent when they lie down at night nor eyes end their visions after the sun comes up. I do it because a high-salary engineering job would have still left me starving. I write for the moments that step on my jaw and leave me face down on the floor. I write for the sake of November mornings, tender, four o'clock moments of love when the air carried through the bedroom window brings with it the crisp, gray reminder of rain. I do it because there are wheels and eyes in my chest that well up every time light dances off the water...and all I want is to drown in it. I write because time rubs against me, and the sands are quickly receding. The reasons why have never really mattered. Sooner or later, we all slip into the ocean.