Ansel Adams and such

[jazzfish]

It is so very good to have my keyboard and trackball back. Have I mentioned that? It just is. Keys are where they ought to be. Typing's more accurate, and editing speed increases by, oh, about ten times.

I've more or less given up on ICQ and have switched over to gchat. I'm told that it interacts acceptably well with AIM/ICQ/what have you; haven't tried this myself. So, if you want to find me, it's jazzfishzen at EDITgoogle's mail service.

The Ansel Adams exhibit at the Corcoran was a delight and a revelation. I instinctively try to put my experiences into words, to name them and understand them and keep them with me. When I'm confronted by things that resist verbalization-- the Dale Chihuly sculptures or the Veiled Rebekah in Atlanta, a sunrise like a nosebleed, my first cup of really good tea-- I get overwhelmed pretty quickly. My brain keeps trying to assign meaning and comprehension to smaller parts of the whole until it shuts down altogether and I end up just kind of staring, trying to take it all in.

(Of course, if I'm in the right mood I can get lost admiring a wrought iron fence or a broken headstone. It's getting there that's the hard part.)

Much of the exhibit was like that. There was a particular print, of a pine tree in a light rain framed by Yosemite Valley, that I've not been able to find online but that utterly transfixed me. (It was right between two amazing lake-reflection shots, which didn't hurt.) Rose and Driftwood, too. Things like that. It's . . . disconcerting, to be that out of myself in the middle of a huge crowd.

Viewing the prints online there's a sense of coldness, of distance, that's not there in person. Or, it is, but it's not bitterly cold, nor unattainably distant. The photos take you with them, leaving everything else behind.

Also, damn that man knew his way around a darkroom.

Comments

[darkfyre-muse.livejournal.com]

I think the word you are looking for is genius. Both artistically and technically. I had always been captivated by his work and as your example demonstrates, his still lifes are even more striking than the grand landscapes. Then I read a technical 'manual' he had written. OMG! He spent about 5 pages discussing how to expose the portrait of a woman. The next segment began with "But if she is smiling..." followed by another 5 pages. It was AMAZING!

[jazzfish]

Good lord. That is some /seriously/ mad darkroom skillz.

"Genius" is both right and insufficient: it doesn't do anything to explain why or how the work moves me, just makes it clear that it does.

[fishy1.livejournal.com]

My brain keeps trying to assign meaning and comprehension to smaller parts of the whole until it shuts down altogether and I end up just kind of staring, trying to take it all in.

i think you just described one of the problems i've been having lately, but have been unable to verbalize. Now if i can just figure out if there's a pattern to the triggering factors...

Thanks :)

[jazzfish]

Glad to help. It took until I realised that I was scanning one particular print, looking for something I could say "aha, that's why this is working so well on me," to see what it was.

The pattern for me seems to be "things that make an impression on me." I use words to dilute the effect of the whatever, to not be overwhelmed. Sometimes it doesn't work.