tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post5602497113934113716..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Life StoryUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-45967626080348310122013-06-13T06:16:45.433-07:002013-06-13T06:16:45.433-07:00Tom,
That bundled-up moppet going down those step...Tom,<br /><br />That bundled-up moppet going down those steps with gallon of Jack Frost Anti Freeze (?) then walking across empty cold space below smokestacks against cold grey sky -- all in Kodachrome, says it all. . .<br /><br />6.12<br /><br />light coming into sky above still black<br />ridge, shadowed bird chirping on branch<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> thing corresponding to that,<br /> completion of thought<br /><br /> not being it, looking which<br /> could begin, now that<br /><br />grey white of fog against top of ridge,<br />cormorant flapping across toward point<br />STEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-11427031948608888482013-06-13T03:32:29.755-07:002013-06-13T03:32:29.755-07:00(Must be the fevers -- comments made me think of t...(Must be the fevers -- comments made me think of <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/1968.html" rel="nofollow">this</a>. Only off by a year. What's in a two-dimensional lifetime?)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-21462977810145818672013-06-13T02:25:49.459-07:002013-06-13T02:25:49.459-07:00I too have been haunted by these photos.
Charles ...I too have been haunted by these photos.<br /><br />Charles Cushman, a privately-wealthy untrained amateur photographer, spent the better part of thirty years traveling the world and documenting his ramblings with his Contax IIA camera. When he died in 1972, Cushman left a collection of 14,500 slides, most of them in Kodachrome, to his alma mater, Indiana University.<br /><br />The place Cushman knew best was Chicago, where he and his wife Jean lived from 1938 to 1952.<br /><br />Many of the buildings Cushman photographed (including all of those seen here) no longer exist, swept away by successive waves of urban redevelopment.<br /><br />His files thus remain the principal visual record of what the city once looked like.<br /><br />Taken together, they also represent a significant testament to the role of Kodachrome in rendering American historical reality -- what photographic photography A. D. Coleman has called "slices of the real".<br /><br />"Monochrome photographs ... whether black and white or sepia toned or cyanotype, inherently signal to us -- by the very absence of full color in their representation of the world -- that they're abstractions, derivations, or something other than the situations, objects, and spaces they depict. By eliminating obvious evidence of the transformative function of photography and giving us a world that more effectively replicates the one we see with our own eyes, color photography makes the medium that much more transparent, credible, and effectively illusory: more tactile, more sensory, more persuasive; less like reports about reality and more like actual slices of the real."<br /><br />A. D. Coleman, in Kodachrome: The American Invention of Our World, 1939-1959, ed. Els Rijper, 2002<br /><br />The story of how this remarkable photo archive came about is a very interesting one, with elements of mystery that linger on. You can read about it here:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/projects/americanfaces/esandweiss.html" rel="nofollow">“The Day in Its Color”: Charles and Jean Cushman: Eric Sandweiss, Journal of American History, 94 (June 2007)</a><br /><br />I've now looked at all of the Chicago photos in the Cushman archive. Those I've selected to post here are a few that have particular personal resonance for me. I once knew some of these locations. Two of the photos were taken on the day after my birth, in this same city. <br /><br />memory spies, shadow architectures<br />spilt down hallways toward<br />a stair, or door, concealing<br />a clock ticking away inside the soft skull<br />of the child not yet bornTChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-62650375708556071992013-06-12T15:28:45.689-07:002013-06-12T15:28:45.689-07:00Pluralist futures and simplistic past. Hanging in ...Pluralist futures and simplistic past. Hanging in the present between, like a series of X-rays on a wall. Someone's life. An exhibition of X-rays. What's going on inside that skull, one word, one snapshot, 1969. The author's foreword, am I the author of my past.Marie Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07787850063283960703noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-18181607223492646962013-06-12T10:13:39.033-07:002013-06-12T10:13:39.033-07:00The different kinds of time that seem to bookend t...The different kinds of time that seem to bookend the other items - a very plain tick tock in the soft skull and the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhiElwpsr0s" rel="nofollow">past and future</a> done up wrong by stupid people.<br /><br />And the photos: people living in the bones of a store; a patchwork of doors<br /><br /><br /><br />Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-50597509384265346702013-06-12T08:17:09.675-07:002013-06-12T08:17:09.675-07:00I love this post. Haunting. I love this post. Haunting. Norahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14439557611640319928noreply@blogger.com