missing Rome

scouting the edges of one's own mind

These are some shots from my walk today that didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to. And with this collection of images is the first time I’ve really sat down to think about how some of my academic neuroses have translated themselves into my photography process. Craig Simmonds is a photographer I’ve been following for years, and I have really been appreciating his self-reflective work talking through parts of his own image creation and collection patterns in terms of culling things, or recognizing that not every photograph can serve the purpose you are trying to make it serve. Maybe this is hard for me because of how materially-focused my brain is, and iphone photography edges into the zone of the immaterial in a lot of ways for me.

photo 1: I discovered in the past week that the best collection of archived images of cincy is the archive of industrial documentation of water works in the public library’s photography collection

photo 2: roofscape I want to reshoot

photo 3: a nod to Craig’s current project dealing with advertisement/consumerism + my own interests (the plaque!)

new bedford whaling museum

To me the simple act of tying a knot is an adventure in unlimited space…limited only by the scope of our own imagery and the length of the ropemaker’s coil. What could be more wonderful than that? 

-Clifford W. Ashley

Photo 1: a panorama from the viewing deck on the second floor. It was a gorgeous, crisp spring day on the water. 

Photo 2: Queequeg in his own proper person, Kathleen Piercefield. This 21st century multi media print is stunning, and a statement about the multi-cultural aspect of whaling, as well as the deeply embedded nature of the New Bedford museum in its own local communities. 

Photo 3: a selection from ‘The Hawser Series’ by Hugette Despault May, which is a series of 12 drawings of the rope that dangles in the center. This photo captures two of my fave things about the museum: the clever incorporation of contemporary art within the historic objects, and the emphasis on materials and their importance throughout the museum (what can I say…I’m an archaeologist…)

Photo 4: a Sperm Whale skeleton. There are four whale skeletons in the museum and they emphasize the theme of scale, which permeates the collections on display, both in terms of large and small items. Also, bones are a material referenced constantly. 

Photo 5: 19th century Sperm Whale ha’akai (ear ornament) from Marquesas Islands, Polynesia. This section (imo) meaningfully integrated indigenous material into the overarching global narrative of whaling that the museum was attempting to portray. And again, the idea of scale + bones as materials both functional and fabulous.

Ev took me when I visited over spring break in March. It’s his favorite museum near Providence, and I am honored that he shared it with me. We are great museum buddies bc we both tend to be object oriented first, and then read the didactics of what interests us, rather than reading first and referencing the stuff second. Regardless, I loveddd this museum.

In addition to the photos, there are two more things I wanted to remember about the museum. Beyond sight, the museum utilized other sensorial experiences deftly: there were different types of whale oil to smell, lots of stations that involved tactile interaction, and various audio stations integrated into the displays. 

My favorite thing in the museum was their curation of the Grand Panorama of a Whaling Voyage ‘Round the World by Benjamin Russell and Caleb Purrington. This panorama painting (clocking in at 1,275 feet long) is super difficult to display, for obvious reasons. It is currently experienced through a touch pad that allows you to scroll, zoom, and access various information about the object, its history, and the process of the large-scale digitization process. Alternatively, the scan of the painting is projected in a film with a score and narration of the journey, for passive viewing. 

Final thoughts: Overall, incredibly intelligent curation that’s perhaps a tad heavy handed on the didactics, but that’s my style anyway so no complaints here. I was incredibly impressed by the integration of a vast collection, spanning time, materials, and cultures, into a cohesive, well-articulated message about the history and continued heritage of whaling. 

marble & slate

Swan Point Cemetery, Providence, Rhode Island

The preservation differences between marble inscriptions {L} and slate inscriptions {R} are no joke. T ] HOMAS J SPRAGUE died in 1864, while Lucia Waterman died in 1821. 

It’s difficult to see in the photo, but the poem carved in cursive at the bottom of Lucia’s tombstone says: He is a god of sovereign love/That promised heaven to me/God taught my soul to soar above/Where happy spirits be

material and monumental variety

Swan Point Cemetery, Rhode Island

please note the offerings left at H.P. Lovecraft’s tombstone, including several pens, a black and mild nib, coins, rocks, keys, and a few other trinkets that were unidentifiable in the early spring mud.

developing archaeological processes

Swan Point Cemetery, Rhode Island

the first photo shows how the retaining wall in one family’s plot has been buried in certain sections. the second photo shows the base of a now-removed sculpted urn, and the third shows an extant example

three centuries of young williams'

Swan Point Cemetery, Providence, Rhode Island

archaeologically, infants are often buried and memorialized differently than adults. however, these three children were each interred with contemporary burial practices of their time: William Waterman (d. 1817) has a beautifully preserved slate headstone, William Francis Sayles (d. 1902) is buried in a bronze-capped sarcophagus, and William M Renard (d. 2009) resides in some of the newest plots near the columbaria. 

some methodological insight into my image curation

I am trying a few things out simultaneously at the moment.  

• I’m getting sentimental about leaving OTR because the big move to Athens is looming ahead of me. The gentrification process is changing the urban landscape so significantly that even when I leave for a month or two at a time it can be disorienting to return and not recognize my surroundings. So, I feel compelled to document something about the specific slice of time that I have had in this neighborhood.  

• (this is of a greater scope than point no 1) However/in addition to this I am also thinking about the visualization of urban landscapes, and more specifically the incorporation of ideas or images or decorative motifs derived from it into art. Through this documentation process I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of my vase painters a little bit and try and capture the details and snippets of things that I notice while out and about. I’ve been taking them randomly as I’ve navigated the neighborhood as a pedestrian going about my daily life rather than trying to do a gridded documentation of things I find interesting. I like the reiterative, re-imaginative process of just taking photos of what catches my attention.

All of the photos on this website were taken on my iPhone and have not been edited, with the exception of occasional cropping. What I’m trying to do is to simulate the view that catches my eye. This doesn’t always work out, for a few reasons. The broad, expansive shots don’t really come out in a way I like or that feels at all similar to the experience of looking. Photographing large, tall buildings on relatively narrow city streets is tough, and there are certain things the iPhone camera is better at than others.

the only photo of the downtown cityscape that I like, after years of trying to take a good photo from this particular outlook

Because of this I find myself gravitating towards shots that are so zoomed in, to capture textures and the gorgeous architectural details that populate the Italianate buildings. I have been experimenting with a way to document the neighborhood, and the gentrification process, in a way that doesn’t feel voyeuristic (? I’m not sure if that’s the right word yet). But focusing in on these micro textures is much more enjoyable and achievable than taking wider shots of whole buildings that don’t communicate as much about the design and materials as they do the larger transition that has happened into whatever flavor boutique.

The roofscapes are harder to capture because they are so striking and constantly shifting and re-inventing themselves as you walk/crane your neck/crouch, and rarely register in photos the way I want them to. Only rarely, and typically with these really aggressively skewed angles, do I get images that feel accurate to what I see.

There is only one photo currently that I took with my phone in a way that created a view I wasn’t participating in as I took it. This one I took today is in that same vein: I extended my phone as far as I could reach towards the ground and took the photo to get an angle of the mud splatters on the pole that I physically could not experience without lying down in the street, next to the curb. I’m not sure if I should include ones like this since I’m specifically trying to capture images that approximate my own physical, visual experience.

In terms of presentation, I am planning on constantly sorting and re-organizing the photos as I add new ones. They’re currently arranged vaguely geographically and vaguely chronologically. There are a few VA/RI intrusions which I’ve noted, but most of the images are from OTR, and over the next month-ish, the bulk of the photography for this project will be completed. I’m not sure how my aesthetic choices will alter when I’m in Greece/Rome over the summer, which will be interesting to document as well.

MFA Visit 20/3/19 part 1

Chinese stone funerary carvings from a corner in Gallery 271

Left Lady / Right Lady // limestone tomb panels with figures in relief // Tang dynasty // 8th century CE

The first two photos I took in the room were of these palace ladies carrying what I assume are funerary offerings. I loved their flowing clothes and elaborate hair, and the flowers in the right lady’s bowl are so elegantly carved I probably stared at them for a good 45 seconds straight. I am struck by the clear iconography of the ladies, want to know more about the objects they’re holding. Also I’m intrigued by the (I think mainly vegetal) incisions in the background.

marble mortuary couch: back panel // detailed carving in multiple scenes and registers // Northern Qi Dynasty // 6th century CE

L: details from the left field of carving//R: details from the right field

With these I was particularly interested in the ways that the registers (the horizontal layers of scenes) interacted with the filler decoration that acts as boundaries between them. 

On the left I thought it was cool how the bands of motifs are diagonally ajar to accommodate the proportioning of space in the bottom register, and the sky and landscape scene in the upper register benefit from this because the landscape/horizon can be more angular & dramatic as a result. Plus visually the angles of the scene boundaries are vertically inverted and feel balanced to my eyes. 

On the right I again noted the off-kilter nature of the banded motifs, but in this instance certain objects and figures interact with them differently. The second figure from the left is touching a something (food?) in a broad, shallow bowl. The bowl overlaps with the alternating bands and vertical trio of dots. The heads of the middle register figures also overlap with this band, and the tops of their heads even overlap with the knees and shins of the kneeling figures above them. The bottom register does not overlap with the these bands (they’re like syntactic dividers but idk what to call them) but the architecture of the columns impacts their composition, in the same way that the right detail does.