Where photography and poetry intersect? It is a question a few have asked and a field, for some unknown reasons, I have been invited to explore e few times.
Photography is said to be a slice of reality, a moment frozen in time (a moment expanded in time?). Poetry, to me, is the rhythm of time which vibrates with our expanding hearts.
As a poet, my attention focuses on the invisible, on bringing (in)-light something that has not emerged yet, a paradox that otherwise would be dismissed, a voice that otherwise would remain silent. According to the great Brazilian photographer Salgado “A photographer is someone drawing with light”.
Illumination is at the heart of both, the illumination of something evanescent, intense, fleeting.
Photography and poetry, in Blasing’s formulation, “share common aesthetic and social aims: each medium seeks to capture human experience, to bear witness to history, to expose truths by means of unusual framings and formulations. Both are indexical (Helen Vendler), apostrophic, allusive rather than narrative.”
If we were to define this intersection instead by what it is produced by how it is received what would we discover? Would it be a space for the practice of reading and looking at the shared territory of intersection? A reading and looking not only by the author but also a practice of the reader/viewer paying attention, connecting, making meaning , imagining and engaging. At the intersection of poetry and photography I found the gentle language of inquiry. A fertile territory to expand, forge, re-create… a practice of transforming our own humanity.
Let’s explore together the language of photography and the ability of poetry to frame and bring into focus. My way to explore is through art making. Would you too make some art at the intersection with poetry and photography? Could this be a new way of working? From The Whisper
Sitting at the intersection
I sit at the intersection
The intersection of who I am and what I do
The intersection of a DNA given to me
The intersection of finding identity in the integration of all the parts I am composed by
The Whisper is the call to continue sitting in that space
The space between the spirit and the matter
In this space I get the chance to touch
And be touched
I discover it through an untouchable me
The one who hides for fear
I disappeared in that untouched me
The Whisper came
To stop tomorrows
And work with what I have
In that intimate space the work started
The work of making the intersection
Between light and shadows
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