Greetings, Pilgrims:
I hope this finds you well and enjoying summer.
Oddball/Apologies.
Substack is just now emerging as not only a platform, but as a recognizable genre, a way of writing about stuff. Sadly, my own Intermitten Signal breaks form. Or maybe I just missed the genre boat. Again. It’s a disease. I appreciate readers, some of them personally close to me and so not to be ignored safely, telling me that:
some Signals are too long;
or too difficult (not everything on the menu will appeal to every diner)
or too different from the other stuff (no way to build a brand, appealing to cat people, dog people, cynics and painters — what the hell is this thing about, anyway?)
doesn’t come out often enough,
isn’t adequately cross refrenced, and, worst of all,
I’ve screwed up monetization.
There are other problems, too, no doubt. But again, it’s a disease. To play with John Cage (“I have nothing to say and I’m saying it”), I have lots to say and I’m not saying it. Like this.
So it comes as some relief that, in contrast to some recent Signals, this outing is short and very accessible.
I was asked to propose a series of images for a wellness room.
This photo assemblage is the result. Given my circumstances, weaknesses, and intellectual stance, the irony is not lost on me. But I am honored.
Most of my photographic work is intended to be suggestive, reflective, perhaps a little demanding. In particular, images build on one another, or try to, sequentially. Photo essays are like but not exactly like an argument, narrative or poem. Here, my intentions are quite different. Each image should stand on its own, be pretty or at least pleasing. Worth looking at, maybe, but not an invitation to wrestle.
While the images can be viewed individually, this assemblage is assembled, should come together. Resonances, harmonies, reminders -- a sense of order seems appropriate.
Nature, Abstraction, Wellness: a photo assemblage
I’m a little less clear on why abstraction seems fitting for this project.
O.K., not the flowers. This assemblage includes more than a few images of flowers, and flowers are not usually very abstract (but take a look). Flowers, are, however, the obvious subjects for this kind of work, as anybody who has spent time in high end hospitals knows. I love photographing flowers, especially strange one in odd places, not just for the color and form, but for the fact that they they don’t move very quickly. I thought about doing this entire assemblage with flowers, perhaps a tourist version of Flowers, Thoughts: a photo essay.
Ordinarily, I stress the particular. This image conveying something about this moment, this place. This (all too mortal?) animal. But there are no pictures of animals in this assemblage.
Abstraction soothes, no? Numbers, fundamental shapes, float free of any particulars. An intimation of the immortal, or at least Platonism? Sickness unto death, indeed.
Be such things as they may, I hope you enjoy the pictures.
— David A. Westbrook