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Monday 16 September 2013

"Like a filter on a faucet...": John Ashbery: Flow Chart / Edward Burtynsky: Water


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Xiaolangdi Dam #1, Yellow River, Henan Province, China 2011: photo by Edward Burtynsky, from Edward Burtynsky: Water, 2013 (Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works)




Love that lasts a minute like a filter 
on a faucet, love that is always like headlights in the glistening dark, heed 
the pen’s screech. Do not read what is written. In time 
it too shall become incoherent but for the time being it is good 
just to tamper with it and be off, lest someone see you. And when this veil 
of twisted creeper is parted, and the listing tundra is revealed 
behind it, say why you had come to say it: the divorce. The no reason, as 
the plane dives up into the sky and is lost. All that one had so carefully polished 
and preserved, arranged in rows, boasted modestly to the neighbors about, 
is going and there is nothing, repeat nothing, to take its place.


John Ashbery: from Flow Chart, 1991



Pivot Irrigation #11, High Plains, Texas Panhandle, USA 2011: photo by Edward Burtynsky, from Edward Burtynsky: Water, 2013 (Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works)



Cerro Prieto Geothermal Power Station, Baja, Mexico 2012: photo by Edward Burtynsky, from Edward Burtynsky: Water, 2013 (Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works)
 

Greenhouses, Almira Peninsula, Spain 2010: photo by Edward Burtynsky, from Edward Burtynsky: Water, 2013 (Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works)
 


Dryland Farming #2, Monegros County, Aragon, Spain 2010: photo by Edward Burtynsky, from Edward Burtynsky: Water, 2013 (Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works)


Dryland Farming #24, Monegros County, Aragon, Spain 2010: photo by Edward Burtynsky, from Edward Burtynsky: Water, 2013 (Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works)
 

Pivot Irrigation / Suburb, South of Yuma, Arizona, USA 2011: photo by Edward Burtynsky, from Edward Burtynsky: Water, 2013 (Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works)


 Rice Terraces #2, Western Yunnan Province, China 2012: photo by Edward Burtynsky, from Edward Burtynsky: Water, 2013 (Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works)


VeronaWalk, Naples, Florida, USA 2012: photo by Edward Burtynsky, from Edward Burtynsky: Water, 2013 (Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works)
 

Thjorsá River #1, Iceland 2012

Thjorsá River #1, Iceland 2012: photo by Edward Burtynsky, from Edward Burtynsky: Water, 2013 (Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works)

12 comments:

mistah charley, ph.d. said...

those people in naples florida whose homes are pictured would seem to be at the head of the line of floridians whose land will be under water assuming the world's ice keeps melting

a guy i knew was debating between getting a piece of shore property and some woods on a mountain - he decided on the mountain location

Dalriada said...

This is wonderful

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

Beautiful Burtynsky photos here -- "All that one had so carefully polished . . . is going and there is nothing, repeat nothing, to take its place."

Dalriada said...

And what is this

someone

if not to be found in?

That is
delivered of


again

Hazen said...

Only by tampering with the Earth like this can we pretend to live. Tampering with, of course, is a euphemism. The terrain tilts towards exhaustion . . . I’ve read that the sheer weight of the Xiaolangdi Dam is causing geological disturbances, i.e. tremors, in the surrounding area.

Poet Red Shuttleworth said...

Yes, Tom,

Ashbery flows rightly into it: we are going going gone-soon into the sky with the ashes of our beloved Wolfhounds... and the "Cadillac Desert" agri-business is drying up before our tongues. Last night so much mowed summer hay strong-wind-blew from one coulee to another.

Yes, onward a-stumble,
Red Shuttleworth

TC said...

Many thanks to all for dropping into the pond... and yes, let us hope there is water in it, when next we stumble.

ACravan said...

I'm not certain what to make of the Ashbery-Burtynsky juxtaposition, but the quality of both artists' work simply amazes me. The Ashbery poem is, for me, incredibly moving and precise. It reminds me (although I couldn't say it as well as he does) of dark thoughts I've had lying sleepless in the dark. Occasionally I laugh quietly to myself, which is slightly better than laughing aloud in full view of people who reasonably find that kind of behavior annoying and ridiculous. It's a very powerful poem. As for the Burtynsky images, I can barely imagine how he's able to pull off such feats, but I'm glad he does. I wonder, as one is forced to, looking at objects that can be framed and put on walls, how I would feel looking on any of them on my wall day-after-day. They would never ever become comfortable, comforting wall furniture, that's for certain. Curtis

TC said...

Curtis,

I suppose my internal justification of the collision went something like this: both these artists view modern life from a distance.

With Burtynsky the distance is obviously created by the literal removal of the feeling subject from the viewing situation. These images made with cameras installed in helicopters and drones are in that sense equivalent to NASA imagery. Though an implication may be drawn as to a polemical purpose, the emotion is checked, restrained, held off by a classical formality ("carefully polished...") imposed with the composition.

In the case of Ashbery the distance (again pretty obviously) is ironic. We are encouraged to hear these confidences (or should one call them pseudo-confidences?) as tossed-off, tongue-in-cheek. The tone discourages us from taking things too seriously. And then serious things are said.

Both artists are "cool". With the state of things as they are at present, it wouldn't do to become too heated.

(By the by, as to owning one of those colossal Burtynsky prints, he tells a story of offering to trade a large print of one of the photos in his Quarry series to the quarry owners in return for a slab from the quarry, from which he wanted to make a kitchen counter for his home. The quarry owners, looking at the images of defaced hillsides, said Why on earth would we want to have such a thing? It would only remind us that nothing more can be extracted from that site. Can't you give us something a bit more... And so Burtynsky offered some new images, this time with no defacement shown. The quarry owners said, Fine. Burtynsky got his kitchen counter -- and, he says, kept those later, "laundered" images out of circulation.)

ACravan said...

Thanks very much. That's helpful. And the Burtynsky quarry-counter story is wonderful. Curtis

Unknown said...

The mountain will probably be fracked, or erupt, Mistah Charley. There’s no getting away from it. Meanwhile here we are, comically trapped in this MEAT. LOL. “The listing tundra.” I do not believe "there is nothing to take its place". Sorry, John Ashbery.
Now, turning to that photograph of the greenhouses – (Greenhouses, Almira Peninsula, Spain 2010: photo by Edward Burtynsky) – THAT is a PHOTOGRAPH! That is something the artist consciousness in the meat can only aspire to do and attempt many times and perhaps occasionally succeed, as here, to capture some part of the hugeness, the essence around the meat, the flesh, the spirit incarnate. Part of it. A clue. There is more to this than meets the eye. This photograph meets the eye. “How do you do?”

Harris Schiff

TC said...

Hmm... seen through binoculars from the deck of a boat in choppy seas, the tundra may well appear to be listing.