Love Turned Inside Out
We all sometimes wonder where a creative idea - an image, for instance - comes from. If you’ve ever had to apply for funding for a project, or know someone who has, that question becomes paramount demanding some verbiage about an artist’s “response” to something or other, as if there were a neatly traceable line back to the source. Even though I often roll my eyes at this a little - okay, a lot - I understand why the questions is asked. There needs to be some proof of thought, some proof of purpose. Even so, the honest answer is as infinite as it is personal and provisional.
But I’m certain, in the end, it comes down to love.
I’ve been thinking about this recently after someone casually remarked to me, after looking at some of my photographs, that color must not very important to me. He was looking at some portraits I had shot for my project-in-progress, Modern Devotional, in which black, or a gradation of black, is often the dominant color. (I’m thinking, too, of the sumptuous blacks, full of secrets, in the work of Roy DeCarava.) Given how deeply I love working with the questions color presents, surprised hardly captures my reaction to his question.
That got me curious about the impulse for a project and how that impulse is perceived or understood once it takes shape. How and where does an idea or point of view emerge? And also this: in which guise does it show up, and where does it go?
I explained to my friend one deep source of inspiration: Baroque art. I explained how I was drawn to the strong graphic shapes, the high drama of the contrast of light and dark, the uncertain blur of shadows, tensed between revelation or concealment, and the moving sinuous lines for which work of that period is known. I love the theater it makes.
But like many loves, it can sometimes be a question of degree.
And like some loves, it can show up in a way you might not recognize at first.
I was reminded of this recently sorting through some images from a trip I took to Madrid last fall. At first, I didn’t think there was much to work with; I was disappointed with myself and what I had shot. Just when I was getting ready to turn off the computer, dejected, a strong graphic shape caught my eye, and a shadowy blur tensed between revelation and concealment, and moving sinuous lines. But they were floating on a sea of white, rather than swimming in an ocean of black, which is why I didn’t notice them at first - hiding in plain sight!
The images were captured at the Real Academia de Bella Artes in a hallway lined with full-length portraits of monks in white habits by Zurbarán, a painter I love, who, for all of the endless depth of his dark and rich blacks and browns, was really a poet of every kind of white. The museum, and the portraits, were a all a little shabby and in need of some serious restoration, rather like how I was feeling when I saw them. Nevertheless, within them, within some images captured of them, unnoticed at first, was love - love turned inside out, simply asking for a patient second look.
(Click on image to see full size.)
