I didn’t expect to take these pictures. I just knew that the bulb that blew in the small lamp that I keep on my office desk made a lovely white blast pattern on the glass and that I wanted to shoot it, but I didn’t expect this play of color and light when I did.
The results – shot from a single vantage point within just a few minutes -- surprised me the way filmmaker Stan Brakhage’s The Text of Light (shot through a crystal ashtray) surprised me when I first saw it as a student, lucky enough to be at one of his screenings.
I know it’s not even close to what he pulled off, but a girl’s gotta start somewhere.
Here’s a link to the whole slideshow »
5 comments:
godDAMMIT.
the way your life steps relative to mine is so fricken eerie ... this last weekend i netflixed the criterion discs of stan and have spent about 20 hours bringing an ex-gf up to speed on him.
in fact, the reason i logged on today was to write about him. i will sometime, but not this second, given this here it seems too forced.
i've known a lot of strange and interesting people, but of all of them, i can honestly say that stan was the only truly unique thinker i've ever known -- everyone else (including myself) is just derivative. when you march like that, it puts you in a very interesting league: it makes you the absolute best in the world at what you do.
it also makes you the worst.
as an aside (you probably already know this, but your super hardcore readers will like it):
i was talking to the geology prof whose ashtray stan shot for ttol. i told him how cool i thought the film was.
"i guess."
i'm confused ... "um, is there a problem?"
"stan was talking to me in my office and said, 'hey, look at how the light hits that ashtray ... that'd be nice to film sometime ... can i?' i said, 'sure.' little did i know that he was going to set up in my office for two years."
GODDAMMIT I'M STILL PISSED.
so i'll mentally short-stream you instead ...
here's my favorite artist of the moment:
http://www.lewallencontemporary.com/searchresults.php?start=1&artistId=10000626
looks eerily familiar, no?
by chance i talked to him on the phone not long ago and gushed until he got excited (maybe for no other reason than shutting me up).
your pictures are beautiful. so is your mind.
i hate you.
goddammit.
I didn't know about the ashtray -- very cool story -- and as I mentioned -- if I had any idea that my writing about brahkage would mean that nobody got to hear about brahkage from someone who actually knew him and studied under him I would have kept my damn trap shut.
I'm gonna go mope. I hope you'll reconsider.
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