Thoughts, Findings and Research

I never thought that my proposal would remind someone of a poem. That was until this section of the quote I used by Viktor Shklovsky was brought to the attention of a friend of mine:

..the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.

So, not exactly my proposal per se, but the applicability of that particular selection to both photography and poetry . The poem he referred to was The Red Wheel Barrow, by William Carlos Williams. Here it is in full:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

He then commented on the fact that some of the ideas behind photography can be mirrored in poetry, as it is something common to the artistic mind to question the nature of reality. In other words, the effectiveness of the poem is in the way in which he describes the wheel barrow; making the reader ponder over it and question it’s significance. This effect is very similar to the way in which we, and I quote:

“..step back from a photo and wonder why the photographer has chosen his subject matter. You can have a black and white picture with a single red jacket…so much depends on the red jacket.”

To fully understand the poem and what I’m getting at, read this commentary on it (it’s a quick read, don’t worry). I find it really quite fascinating how effective such a simple poem is at constructing a reality, and this ties in with the whole debate surrounding the construction and/or representation of reality within photography. What is the real in the photographic process, if there is any? One can even go further and say, what is reality at all?

Now, here is a poem he himself wrote that he used as a second example to support his point. It’s called Like So:

A poem on its side

looks like a city at night.

Upside down,

like crystals, like stalagmites, stalactites,

or blood –

because we never can say

what we want to say

in a way that is

straightforward

and not shaped and edited

with rhyme and meter

to boast and soften the blow.

Words said so

mislead and hurt –

like a poem

lying

on its side.

© Alan David Pritchard

The beauty of the poem is that it keeps twisting itself, altering what it’s trying to be. It’s ironic, because it talks about how poetry tries to be so many things and yet it does just that. This leads me onto the element of the Visual Spectacle [see brief] within the context of my project. Quite simply put, it is such that my attempt to isolate these objects is a visual spectacle in itself in the sense that I am prolonging one’s perception of a construct in order to place emphasis on it’s being. Much like the poem by Williams contemplates on the wheel barrow by making it stand out in it’s environment through the use of contrasting and enhancing descriptions of it’s surroundings.

For more of Alan’s poetry, please see his collection of poems entitled Advancing Backwards. You can preview 4 of them by clicking on preview underneath the cover.